India

Bitupan Deka was out shopping for a “gamusa” (traditional scarf) with his mother in India’s northeastern state of Meghalaya when he noticed something unusual.

“Every shop selling the scarf had the same handful of patterns repeated over and over,” he told Al Jazeera over the telephone from Shillong, the capital of Meghalaya.

“When I asked around, I found that weavers in Sualkuchi [district in neighbouring Assam state] are paid a one-time fee of roughly 2,000 rupees [$21] for each design they develop, instead of royalties. Cutting down the number of designs they produce was a cost-saving practice followed by the manufacturers.”

This discovery prompted Deka, an assistant professor of computer technology at Shillong’s MIT University, to create a system that can produce infinite new designs for such fabrics.

“My work isn’t meant to replace the traditional designers. I hope, instead, that it will become a tool in their hands to create new and modern motifs more easily, so the consumers can have variety,” Deka said.

Once the patent, which is being applied for under the research and development department of his university, comes through, Deka plans to monetise the system by making it a commercial designing service that the textile industry can avail.

In India’s varied textile traditions, patterns and motifs carry the memory of a place and the mythology of its people – sometimes even the history of migrations.

The designs are imagined by weavers from things that exist around them, and then painted with locally available colours, mostly using carved clay and wooden frames. These weavers do not simply reproduce a pattern; they inherit it. Their hands hesitate where their grandmother’s did, and they know why a particular flower must face left.

A computer has no such inheritance or hesitation. It learns by analysing pictures and repeating them in endless variations. And yet, as Deka’s system shows, the computer can now draw and weave the same flower.

The Rekh Sanganeri Dataset is a similar system developed for hand-block printed Sanganeri textiles from the western Indian state of Rajasthan. It includes high-resolution images of printed patterns, annotated down to ink bleed and slight misalignment – the imperfections that are the hallmark of the handmade work.

Its developer, Reddy Sai Nivas C, says it should be used as a resource for research and art, not as a substitute for artisans.

But the disclaimer is the paradox: Tools built to preserve a craft are making its visual language easier to digitally reproduce without involving the craftsperson.

Dinesh Chhipa comes from one of the oldest Chhipa families, an artisan and merchant caste renowned for dyeing and block printing. He is a Bagru designer – a block printing technique from Bagru town in the western state of Rajasthan – and a textile businessman.

“Traditional craft is slow to produce. Even if someone offered us a fortune, we wouldn’t be able to produce these pieces in mass numbers, so I don’t fault those using digital technology and AI to fill the gap,” he told Al Jazeera.

“But don’t borrow craft and regional names like Bagru and Jaipuri [named after the capital city of Rajasthan]. These designs and motifs were born out of a culture and necessities of the communities they come from.”

Who owns culture when it turns into plain data?

India has been digitising its textile memory for years – from the Botanical Survey of India’s historical collections to the Bharatiya Vastra Shilpa Kosh, a national portal built by the state-run National Institute of Fashion Technology and the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC).

Without documentation, the fragile traditions and knowledge could disappear. But digitisation also allows the same archive to be used by an AI system seeking to reproduce these crafts at scale.

At the India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi in February this year, Indian software company Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) showcased Bridgital Loom, an AI system that converts textile designs into loom-ready instructions. LED lights on the loom guide a weaver through the thread sequences of intricate Banarasi and Kanchipuram patterns – named after the cities where these iconic arts grew.

TCS says the technology helps weavers execute complex designs faster and with fewer errors, and is meant to be a bridge between the artisans and technology. A pilot project that uses the loom is already under way at Kanchipuram, a town in southern Tamil Nadu state.

In an interview with the online platform Digit at the New Delhi summit, the head of AI strategy at Bridgital Loom, Muthulakshmi Nellaiappan, pointed out that a new weaver takes more than 15 years to master the art.

“With the technologies we have in hand … the younger weaver who has just entered the skill can become a master much sooner,” she said.

Technology flattens the master-apprentice hierarchy of traditional knowledge systems. The weaver no longer has to conceptualise or remember patterns, colours and codes; he blindly follows the machine’s instructions, handing creativity and memory to AI.

Nellaiappan said that since a large percentage of India’s looms are non-electronic, TCS has ensured its system works with handlooms as well and that it was essential for scaling up the technology.

But digital looms also raise another question: Who owns culture when it turns into plain data?

For generations, India’s textile knowledge sat outside intellectual property systems. It lived in community memory, passed from master to apprentice with no certificate of ownership. Kanchipuram, Mekhela-Sador, Sanganeri and Banarasi are names for places that these textiles helped shape, not merely emerged from.

Now, this knowledge is entering generative models that owe nothing to these traditions.

For designers and manufacturers, the possibilities are seductive: Motifs combined at will, colours changed with a command, and thousands of designs generated instantly. The machine offers abundance.

The artisan, on the other hand, has always lived with scarcity: Of money, bargaining power, or recognition.

Ananthalakshmi Vadivel, a third-generation weaver and owner of Vadivel Silk Looms in Kanchipuram, says their venture is already competing in the market with cheaper Kanchipuram sarees produced on electronic looms.

“Perhaps, with AI, these sellers can create trending designs faster and cheaper to attract mass consumers. But these imitations can never replace the original,” she told Al Jazeera.

“There will always be a market for authentic Kanchipuram and handcrafted textiles, no matter how much technology makes the imitation cheaper. True Kanchipuram weave, colour, and designs can only be created by hand, and discerning buyers know this.”

Then again, the question is no longer whether AI can recreate a textile. It sure can. The question is: Who gets paid when it does?

Legal gaps

In December 2025, the federal government’s Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade floated a statutory “blanket licence” – a system where AI developers could train models on lawfully obtained copyrighted material without seeking permission from each rights holder. Once commercialised, those systems would owe royalties to copyright owners at rates set by the government.

But intellectual property (IP) laws assume a traceable work with a traceable author. A motif, on the other hand, is communal property, its technique passed down through generations with no single originator.

In such cases, who is entitled to royalty and copyright? The artisan who first created the design? The photographer who documented it? The researcher who assembled the dataset? The developer who built the tool? India’s laws offer no clear answers. The artisan whose name never appeared on a label may once again be missing from the paperwork.

Meanwhile, the government is planning a dedicated AI-handloom research department under the Centre of Excellence for Handloom Technology at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in the capital, New Delhi. Inaugurated in August, the $1.4m facility aims to modernise India’s handloom sector by combining traditional weaving heritage with contemporary technology.

The government also plans to register thousands of weavers and fit their handlooms with sensors that convert weave patterns into digital data, and issue QR-coded tags to trace provenance. Maharashtra’s Vingatha system does something similar at the state level by authenticating handloom sarees such as Paithani and Karvat Kathi.

The idea is simple: If a saree can tell you where it came from, the person who made it becomes harder to erase.

While these measures cannot stop AI-enabled design and mass production, they may give artisans more visibility and turn each piece into an archive.

In art galleries, the traditional textiles are increasingly shedding the label of craft for the more lucrative category of contemporary art.

Gurjeet Singh, an artist from Chandigarh city, recently hosted a textile-based solo show in New York. His work transforms discarded fabrics, buttons and embroidered scraps into sculptures that explore queer identity and social prejudices surrounding gender and sexuality.

Sayan Chanda, an Indian artist based in London, works with cut and rewoven vintage Bengali quilts to question fixed notions of cultural belonging. Gurugram-based artist Sumakshi Singh uses delicate embroidery and suspended thread structures to reconstruct the architectural fragments of vanished homes, gardens and personal histories. There are many more.

In New Delhi, 20 such artisans and craft-led collectives featured last month at an art show celebrating the traditional textile crafts.

“Our aim is to present these traditional crafts as living practices that continue to evolve through contemporary artisans, rather than as heritage to be archived. Kanmai Payun, one of the artists featured in the show, for example, is the last practitioner of Fulor Saneki, a flower pattern used by Assamese weavers. We encouraged her to teach her 17-year-old son so the craft outlives her,” Aparupa Ray Ganguly, the curator of the show, told Al Jazeera.

But as textiles gain value in art galleries, their makers do not necessarily gain automatic control over their work.

In April, another art exhibition in New Delhi, titled No ‘One’ Maker, saw artisans missing from the show’s preview, exposing how traditional textiles are aestheticised, but the people who carry that knowledge remain unrecognised.

“You cannot separate the names from the community. Call your mass-produced work digital prints and leave the traditional names to the original artisans,” says Chhipa, the artisan and merchant from Rajasthan.

UN experts have called on the Indian government to stop the use of “excessive force” in the wake of the crackdown on opposition and student protests in India.

In a statement on Tuesday, the two dozen independent experts pressed for an impartial investigation into Indian authorities’ conduct, saying that demonstrators had sustained injuries and some reported being subjected to ill-treatment.

“Protesters have sustained injuries, with some reporting being subjected to ill-treatment. The experts expressed particular concern about reports of sexual violence and other forms of gender-based abuse in the protests and related detentions,” according to the statement.

UN experts are appointed by the UN Human Rights Council to monitor and document specific human rights crises but are independent of the organisation itself.

India’s Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), along with other opposition parties and student organisations, has led protests this month demanding Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar’s resignation, after 130 million names were removed from voter lists.

The protesting groups said the removal disproportionately affected poor and homeless people as well as ethnic minorities including Muslims, who are unlikely to vote for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

The BJP and India’s Election Commission deny the accusations. The Election Commission said it was removing duplicate, deceased, shifted and otherwise ineligible voters and that anyone excluded in error can pursue appeals.

‘Deployed force’

“Despite the non-violent nature of the assemblies, law enforcement agencies have reportedly deployed force against unarmed students including by means of police so-called lathi charges, and have prevented thousands from joining the protests,” the UN experts said.

Lathi charges are coordinated movements by a policing force using sticks to disperse crowds.

“We call on the authorities to immediately cease the use of excessive force, rescind blanket assembly bans, and refrain from the misuse of digital surveillance, including through biometrics, and internet disruptions,” they added.

India has repeatedly dismissed such criticism and cast it as interference in the country’s internal affairs, including when the UN human rights office earlier this month expressed concerns over mass detentions in relation to the latest protests.

New Delhi, India — United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio has arrived in India for a two-day visit, during which he is set to tour the Jamnagar refinery complex in Gujarat, owned by billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries, a major player in global oil markets.

Reliance’s crude refinery in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state is the world’s largest single-site refinery. In many ways, Reliance Industries’ businesses sit at the crossroads of the ongoing global energy crisis.

The conglomerate is central to Washington’s efforts to punish Russian energy buyers, while also trying to contain oil prices amid the war on Iran, on top of rising diesel costs in the US, where a crucial midterm election looms. Reliance has also only recently committed to a major investment in the US, which President Donald Trump’s administration has cited as an example of its successes in luring global capital.

Rubio is skipping the capital, New Delhi, at a time when the US-India bilateral relationship has been rocky, strained by a string of friction points — and an elusive trade deal.

So why is the top US diplomat visiting the world’s largest single-site oil refinery?

Where is Rubio visiting?

After meetings in Mumbai, India’s financial hub in the western state of Maharashtra, Rubio will fly to Jamnagar in neighbouring Gujarat, near the Gulf of Kutch. Jamnagar opens into the Arabian Sea and is home to Reliance Industries’ refining complex, a major hub for crude processing and fuel exports, which processes 1.4 million barrels per day (bpd).

Rubio had visited India earlier this year too, but this trip “is a little more business-focused”, the US ambassador to India, Sergio Gor, told reporters last week. A readout from Rubio’s office noted that he would “meet with business leaders to promote opportunities for commercial investment and economic cooperation”.

“[At Jamnagar] he will meet some of the folks at Reliance,” Gor said.

What’s in Jamnagar?

The world’s largest single-site oil-refining complex has a combined crude-processing capacity of 1.4 million bpd. That is nearly 1.5 percent of global refining capacity, according to the company.

The complex comprises two refineries: the original facility, commissioned in 1999 with a capacity of 660,000bpd, and a second, export-oriented refinery commissioned in 2008, adding 580,000bpd, which operates in a special economic zone.

Jamnagar imports crude from international suppliers and exports refined products to global markets. The refinery can process heavy, sulphur-rich crude that many facilities cannot handle efficiently, converting oil into higher-value products.

Reliance said last month that the complex has processed more than 216 crude grades, claiming to be “perhaps the only refinery to achieve this feat”.

The Jamnagar refinery’s capacity is also driving a sharp revival in imports of Venezuelan crude — taken over by the US earlier this year after abducting then-President Nicolas Maduro — as Washington seeks to reshape global oil trade.

Reliance is expected to account for roughly 350,000bpd to 370,000bpd of the October intake, according to estimates from analytics firm Kpler. “We will talk with Reliance about refining more Venezuelan crude,” Rubio told reporters in brief remarks on Tuesday.

Why is the refinery significant for global energy supplies?

Reliance is a central player in keeping global oil markets stable, as one of the world’s biggest suppliers of refined petroleum products. In September, for instance, six of the seven large cargo ships that docked at European Union ports carrying oil products were bearing Reliance goods.

Reliance’s biggest export is diesel, which Trump has been particularly worried about, with prices reaching historic highs in the US ahead of midterm elections early next month.

Though the data on exports by category is not public, an analysis by the Reuters news agency from trade sources noted that Reliance Industries exported 21.66 million tonnes of refined petroleum products in the first half of 2025 from Jamnagar. Diesel accounted for the largest share at 9.81 million tonnes, followed by petrol at 6.14 million tonnes and jet fuel at 2.06 million tonnes.

Europe accounted for the biggest share of the company’s exports, making up 28 percent of Reliance’s refined products during the period. Buyers include BP, ExxonMobil, Glencore, Vitol and Trafigura.

The Jamnagar refinery also shipped about $143m worth of oil products to the US last month, according to data cited by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), a think tank in Finland.

CREA noted in its report that the EU’s ban on importing petroleum products made from Russian crude from January 2026 does not adequately prevent products from refineries in third countries from entering Europe when those refineries also process Russian crude. The Jamnagar refinery is a prime example of that loophole.

Rubio’s visit to the refinery also comes as Trump faces his worst approval ratings amid inflation and rising fuel prices ahead of the midterm election in November. Just about 31 percent of Americans are happy with Trump’s performance – the lowest-ever number in his two terms, according to a Reuters/Ipsos survey.

The Trump administration has also reportedly been pushing Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to stop strikes on Russian energy facilities, which have rattled the global fuel markets.

Why the refinery is important for the Russia-Ukraine war

Reliance is also a critical actor in US efforts to influence how much oil Russia sells.

Since the start of Russia’s full-fledged war on Ukraine in February 2022, India has emerged as the second-largest buyer of Russian oil after China. And Reliance is driving that surge in imports. While only 3 percent of its oil was sourced from Russia before 2022, that share rose to 50 percent by 2025.

So when Trump imposed an additional 25 percent tariff on Indian goods in August 2025 to punish New Delhi for the purchase of Russian oil, Reliance was directly affected. It cut back on Russian crude imports significantly in subsequent months, but it still made up a third of the oil processed by Jamnagar’s refinery during the July-September 2026 quarter.

That was under threat when the Trump administration appeared poised to impose a 100 percent tariff on Indian goods because of continued Russian oil imports, under a new law passed last month.

But Trump has since suspended those proposed tariffs, easing concerns for India and Reliance.

Rubio has said India has been diversifying its import mix away from Russian crude, even as it still buys millions of barrels of Russian oil every day. “You’ve got countries like India, for example, that have voluntarily diversified their energy portfolio, but are still getting a substantial amount of energy from Russia because it’s hard to pivot from one day to the next,” Rubio said on Sunday.

“But they’re also an important ally and partner of the United States.”

Is Reliance also investing in the US?

Yes, India’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani, the chairman and managing director of Reliance Industries, is investing in the US, primarily through energy-related projects.

It is backing America First Refining’s planned oil refinery at the Port of Brownsville in Texas, also the first major US refinery in about 50 years, announced by Trump in March.

The refinery is expected to cost $3bn to $4bn and process about 60 million barrels of US crude annually. Reliance has signed a 20-year agreement to buy a large share of the facility’s output, with operations expected to start around 2029.

In November 2024, Reliance’s US subsidiary also acquired a 21 percent stake in helium explorer Wavetech Helium for $12m as part of its low-carbon energy strategy.

Last month, Trump announced that India’s Essar Group — an oil major with knee-deep ties to Russia — is planning an $18bn integrated steel investment in the US through its subsidiary, Mesabi Metallics.

Didn’t Trump’s ally just lock horns with Ambani?

Despite Reliance’s investments in the US and Rubio’s upcoming visit to the Jamnagar facility, Elon Musk, the world’s richest man who is also a key Trump ally, recently hit out at Ambani.

His Starlink space telecommunications firm has struggled for years to secure a licence to operate in India.

In ⁠a series of X posts recently, Musk accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government of stalling Starlink’s entry to ⁠favour market leader Ambani’s telecom firm, Jio. Musk taunted Ambani directly, addressing ‌him as “Prime ‌Minister Ambani” and asking whether he would “consider allowing Starlink to compete”. Starlink, Musk wrote, was being blocked by “oligarchs” protecting their “monopolistic chokehold” on Indians.

In a statement issued on X, Reliance said it has “never feared competition” and has “grown in an India that welcomes investment and innovation, homegrown or international”.

The extension of the custody of the CJP activists comes amid a crackdown on near daily protests against the government.

An Indian ‌‌court has extended the detention of two leaders of the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP).

The extension for Ashutosh Ranka and Saurav Das on Monday comes amid a crackdown on near-daily protests against the government.

The two activists from the youth-led movement were arrested as they demonstrated at a historic protest venue despite a ban. Their jailing provoked a new protest in New Delhi on Friday.

The CJP is a major force behind the protests, which have demanded the resignation of India’s election chief over a controversial revision of voter lists that critics say favours Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya ⁠⁠Janata Party (BJP).

Ranka and Das were ⁠⁠among 14 protesters who climbed over barricades last week to enter the Jantar Mantar observatory, the day after it was removed from a list of approved demonstration sites. A court later sent the activists to prison for five days.

Indian media reported on Monday evening that they had been detained for two more days after police requested extra time to question them. Delhi ‌‌Police did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“This is an absolute mockery of the judicial system,” the CJP’s legal head, Ratna Singh, told reporters outside the court, adding that the party would challenge the order in a higher court.

The CJP, alongside opposition parties and left-wing student organisations, has led near-daily protests this month demanding Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar’s resignation, after 130 million names were removed from voter lists.

The Election Commission has said that the lists included 28 million people who have died, 63 million who have relocated, and 30 million who could not be traced. It denied favouring any party and said ⁠⁠wrongly deleted voters can re-enrol.

The BJP has accused rivals of trying to undermine democracy by wrongly questioning legitimate electoral processes.

CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke, student leaders and several of their supporters were also detained on Friday as ⁠⁠hundreds poured into central Delhi for a protest in support of Das and Ranka.

However, the youth-led movement insists it will not back off. A sit-in by the CJP and its supporters earlier this year forced the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan over exam paper leaks.

United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio is to visit India in the coming week, but he will not set foot in the capital, New Delhi.

Instead, on Monday, Rubio will hold talks with Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar in Mumbai, India’s financial hub, and then visit an oil refinery in Jamnagar in the western state of Gujarat, according to a statement from the US Department of State.

His itinerary sparked a political storm after the US ambassador to India said Washington expected Jaishankar to travel to meet Rubio, prompting opposition leaders to accuse the government of allowing India’s top diplomat to be “summoned” on home soil.

The spat comes as relations between the two countries are strained over trade, tariffs and India’s purchases of Russian oil.

So why is Rubio avoiding New Delhi, and why has it caused such upset? Here’s what you need to know:

What is Rubio doing in India?

He plans to discuss trade, energy and investment.

Rubio is arriving on Sunday from Samarkand, Uzbekistan, where he has been meeting with five Central Asian states at the C5+1 summit.

In India, he is due to meet senior officials to discuss the US-India strategic partnership and energy cooperation and hold talks with business leaders, the State Department said.

Indian Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal appeared to confirm the agenda, stating on Friday that the Mumbai talks would cover energy, trade and investment, defence, and critical and emerging technologies.

In Jamnagar, Rubio is to visit the world’s largest single-site refinery, operated by billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries, and attend a reception hosted by the Ambani family, according to The Hindu newspaper.

Why isn’t Rubio going to New Delhi?

No official reason has been given.

Rubio was in the Indian capital in May for a meeting of foreign ministers of countries in the Quad, a group consisting of the US, India, Japan and Australia.

The State Department has framed his upcoming trip around energy and investment, and the second stop on Rubio’s India visit, Jamnagar, is one of the world’s most important energy hubs.

The visit also comes as fuel prices bite in the US before next month’s midterm elections.

Reliance, an energy, retail and telecommunications conglomerate, also sits at the centre of Washington’s wider oil diplomacy.

Business Standard, an Indian financial daily, said the Jamnagar stop was significant because Reliance is the biggest buyer of Venezuelan crude oil besides the US at a time when Washington has been urging India to buy more.

Since US forces seized Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in January and took essential control of the country’s oil industry, the US government has marketed Venezuelan oil to buyers abroad.

Reliance is also investing in a new refinery in Texas, the first to be built in the US in 50 years, which Trump hailed as a $300bn deal when he announced it in March, Business Standard reported.

What did the US ambassador say, and why has it caused upset?

Speaking at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum in New Delhi on Thursday, US Ambassador to India Sergio Gor said Rubio would meet Indian government officials in Mumbai, and Washington “expected” Jaishankar and others from New Delhi to travel there to see him.

Earlier in the week, however, Jaiswal had not confirmed the trip or explained why Rubio was skipping New Delhi, telling reporters the Indian government would announce it “at the appropriate time”, The Hindu newspaper reported.

Jairam Ramesh, a general secretary of the opposition Indian National Congress party, wrote on X that the ambassador’s statement was “quite extraordinary”.

Rahul Gandhi, leader of the opposition in parliament’s lower house, also took to X to comment, writing on Friday that Rubio had “summoned his employee to Mumbai”.

Congress MP Pawan Khera went further.

“A foreign government summoning India’s External Affairs Minister on Indian soil is a new low, even by the Modi Government’s standards,” he wrote on X, referring to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Why are US-India relations strained?

Mainly because of Trump’s tariffs and Russian oil.

In August last year after a round of trade talks broke down, the US hit most Indian goods with a 50 percent tariff. Under a framework the two sides agreed in February, that rate fell to 18 percent, however.

Since then, negotiations have stalled.

This month, Indian Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said the talks had “plateaued”, according to The Hindu.

On Thursday, Trade Minister Piyush Goyal said the “first tranche” of a deal was in its final stages but India would not sign until its exporters had an edge over rivals such as Bangladesh, Vietnam and Indonesia, according to the Reuters news agency.

Other points of friction have emerged.

Last week, US Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling announced that his department was suspending eight companies – including the Indian IT giants Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro and HCL – from a labour certification scheme that is a key step for employers seeking green cards for their foreign staff.

Sameer Lalwani, a senior fellow in the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote this week that Indian public opinion of the US has hit a record low, citing US engagement with Pakistan and the US-Israel war on Iran, which he said had pushed India back towards Russian oil.

Despite that, he argued, defence and technology cooperation has quietly deepened, and bilateral trade grew by almost 12 percent in 2025 to nearly $240bn.

In his view, “perceptions of the political relationship have deteriorated faster than its strategic foundations.”

A sanctions law had threatened to make matters worse.

Last month, Trump signed the Lindsey O Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act, which could impose tariffs of up to 100 percent on goods from the five largest importers of Russian oil or gas.

India, one of the world’s biggest buyers of Russian oil, had warned Washington that new tariffs could hurt bilateral ties. Trump signed an executive order seeking to waive the sanctions on Friday as he tries to ease high oil prices before the November 3 US elections.

New Delhi, India – A 19-year-old woman was detained by police during the youth-led antigovernment protests in the Indian capital over the weekend.

The young woman, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of further reprisals from the authorities, said she was detained on Sunday as thousands of people congregated in central New Delhi. They were demanding the resignation of India’s Chief Election Commissioner, Gyanesh Kumar, over alleged irregularities in electoral rolls, which saw the removal of 133 million people from the voter lists.

After the woman’s detention, she and several other demonstrators were taken on a police bus to a location about 50km from the protest site. With no cash and her phone battery drained, the woman spent nearly an hour wandering along a dark road, trying to figure out what to do next.

A car pulled up and the driver asked if she needed any help.

“I was frightened and completely lost. When those volunteers finally helped me get back safely, it felt like a miracle. I had never imagined that someone I had never met would come forward to help me like that,” she told Al Jazeera.

For a young woman in New Delhi, notoriously referred to as the “rape capital of India”, being alone in the middle of the night and getting into a car with strangers is not an easy decision. The city records an average of three rapes a day.

But the young protester said she immediately recognised one of the volunteers in the car. She had seen his videos online, in which he had asked the detained protesters whether they needed help. Recognising a familiar face reassured her that the people offering the ride could be trusted.

The woman was rescued using an AI-assisted tool developed by 25-year-old Rajiv Choudhary, who is helping protesters get home safely after being detained and dropped off by the police far away.

Called the Detainee Gharwapsi Yojana, the initiative combines a digital dashboard with a network of volunteers who track information about police buses carrying detainees and arrange transport for those left stranded.

“Gharwapsi” in Hindi means “to return home”. It is also a play on a campaign by India’s right-wing Hindu groups which want to bring the country’s Muslims and Christians back into the Hindu fold, claiming that their ancestors converted to “foreign” religions from Hinduism. “Yojana” means a plan.

Since the beginning of this month, India has seen near daily protests over alleged electoral fraud by Kumar and his commission. Led by the satirical Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), a number of left-leaning student groups as well as the main opposition Congress party, the protests have seen tens of thousands of people hitting the streets in New Delhi and other cities.

In response, authorities in the Indian capital have imposed a sweeping crackdown, blocking roads, closing metro stations and detaining thousands as Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government faces the biggest challenge to its power after 12 years of rule.

Choudhary said his network’s primary focus was to help minors, elderly people and women, mainly first-time protesters.

The initiative operates through a private digital dashboard that uses AI-assisted data processing, live mapping and information shared by volunteers on the ground. Volunteers send details, including police bus numbers and locations, through WhatsApp, helping the team coordinate assistance and rides home.

Choudhary said he and his associate, journalist Meghnad, who goes by a single name, initially worked with a small group of volunteers to connect detainees with transport, legal assistance and medical support. The network has since expanded to more than 130 volunteers, who have offered their time and resources to assist detained demonstrators.

“For people caught up in these demonstrations, the ordeal doesn’t end with detention. They can be taken far from the protest site and left trying to find their way home from unfamiliar locations, often struggling to contact friends or arrange transport,” he said.

The idea grew out of Choudhary’s experience during an earlier protest called by the CJP at Jantar Mantar, the designated protest site in New Delhi that has now been denotified by the authorities. Initially, he helped organise supplies and volunteers.

As demonstrations continued, he recognised that protesters needed more systemic support, particularly those who were detained by the police and left fending for themselves far from the city limits.

As renewed protests began on October 2 , Choudhary built a digital system around the same volunteer network using AI tools. It began with a simple spreadsheet.

“The whole aim behind the application was that I had to systemise things that are not systemised,” he said. “We just wanted to become a support system that could help our people in their fight for their demands.”

Choudhary recalled receiving a distress call from a woman who had been detained in central New Delhi and released on the outskirts of the city. Stranded alone near a railway station, with metro services shut and no clear way to get home, she was frightened and unsure which way to turn.

She reached out to Choudhary’s network for help and he arranged for a nearby female driver to take her home safely. “It is heartbreaking to see people left helpless in an unfamiliar city, frightened and unsure of how they will get home,” he said.

For now, the Detainee Gharwapsi Yojana operates only in New Delhi, but Choudhary plans to expand it to other cities.

“I am overwhelmed by the response from volunteers and drivers who have come forward to help without charging anything. They are offering their services for free because they want to support the protesters,” he said.

The 19-year-old woman who was helped by Choudhary’s team described the initiative as “a lifeline for protesters”. She said the team not only arranged her return, but also offered reassurance and emotional support.

“I cannot thank them enough. As long as we have people like them in our society, no authority can stop us from demanding our rights and protesting peacefully,” she said.

Incident took place at festival in north Kolkata in India’s West Bengal state amid big crowds and rainfall, police said.

A “stampede” during a Hindu religious festival in eastern India has killed at least 17 people and injured 25, officials said.

A seven-year-old girl was among the fatalities in Saturday’s disaster in north Kolkata in West Bengal, the state’s Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari told reporters.

“Six bodies have so far been identified,” Adhikari said.

Police said the injured were taken to hospital from a Durga Puja pandal, a temporary pavilion housing idols of the goddess Durga at a festival which attracts thousands of ⁠⁠⁠⁠devotees.

A police statement said the stampede happened in the evening due to “heavy crowds of pandal hoppers amid rainfall”.

A senior police official at the scene told the AFP news agency that an announcement caused “commotion” after it started raining and the “crowd waiting outside the pandal [pavilion] was pushing, pulling and rushing forward and fell on the ground, leading to the stampede.”

Prime Minister Narendra Modi described the incident as “saddening.”

“Condolences to the bereaved families. Wishing the injured a speedy recovery. The West Bengal Government is providing all possible help to the affected families,” Modi wrote on X.

⁠Modi’s office announced a ⁠compensation payment of 200,000 rupees ($2,106) for the next of kin of those who died and ‌50,000 rupees ($527) each for the injured.

Interior Minister Amit Shah said the “administration is ensuring that all possible medical facilities are being provided to the injured.”

Deadly crowd incidents happen frequently at Indian mass events, such as religious festivals, often due to poor management and safety lapses.

Last year, a stampede at India’s Kumbh Mela religious fair killed 30 people and injured several others. In Bengaluru, 11 fans were crushed to death during celebrations for the local cricket team’s first Indian Premier League title.

In southern Tamil Nadu state, 36 people were killed in a stampede at a campaign rally for a popular actor-turned-politician

In 2024, 121 people were killed in northern Uttar Pradesh state during a Hindu religious gathering.

India reached 118-5 after seven overs with Naman Dhir hitting 24 off six balls before rain forced an end to the game.

India and the West Indies were forced to settle for a 2-2 stalemate in their five-match Twenty20 International series after Saturday’s deciding match lasted just 48 minutes before it met a watery end.

At Bengaluru’s M Chinnaswamy Stadium, where play began an hour and 45 minutes behind schedule and the match was reduced to nine overs a side, India had reached 118-5 in 7.4 overs when the rain returned, forcing the umpires to call off play with not even a five-overs-a-side shootout possible.

The stadium was hosting its first international fixture since the October 2024 Test match between India and New Zealand and more than 20,000 expectant fans braved the inclement weather.

Their patience was rewarded when India’s batters went on the rampage after being put in by West Indies captain Shai Hope, with Ishan Kishan, Sanju Samson and the impressive Naman Dhir – with an unbeaten 24 off six balls – leading the way.

India lashed eight fours and seven sixes in their limited batting stint, with Kishan bringing up the 100th six of the series by swinging Romario Shepherd over long leg and out of the stadium.

But then, the skies opened up again, emphatically washing away any prospect of a decisive outcome.

Follow updates, including toss and team news, from our live text commentary stream of the series decider.

India host West Indies in the final match of the tour on Saturday with an all-time classic T20 series level at 2-2.

Who: India vs West Indies
What: Twenty20 International cricket series
Where: M Chinnaswamy Stadium, Bengaluru, India
When: Saturday, October 17, at 7pm (13:30 GMT)
How to follow: Al Jazeera Sport will have all the build-up from 11:30 GMT before our live text commentary stream

India host West Indies in the decisive T20 International series finale on Saturday after one of the most compelling white-ball tours in recent memory.

The five-game series is level at 2-2 before the match in Bengaluru after record-breaking feats by the tourists that have pushed the T20 World Cup holders to the limit.

Al Jazeera Sport takes a look at what has become a must-not-miss showdown.

How did West Indies tour of India begin?

The teams played a three-match One-Day International to begin the white-ball tour, which saw India take an unassailable lead after opening eight-wicket wins in Thiruvananthapuram and Guwahati.

After posting a mammoth 351-7 off their 50 overs – thanks largely to KL Rahul’s 129 off 87 balls – in New Chandigarh, India would have felt they had enough on the board to claim the third match, too.

Enter West Indies captain Shai Hope. The opener hit 162 off 143 balls in an unbeaten knock that led his side to a five-wicket win.

It was the West Indies highest ODI run chase.

How did the India-West Indies T20 series begin?

India put the disappointment of the closing defeat in the ODI series behind them by claiming an eight-win win, with 5.2 overs to spare, in the first T20 of the series.

Despite fifties from Hope and Sherfane Rutherford, West Indies were bowled out for 171, with Naman Dhir taking three wickets for the hosts.

Hope then hit an unbeaten 102 off only 45 balls in the second match to lead West Indies to their highest successful Twenty20 run chase.

Hope hit nine sixes and six boundaries as the West Indies finished with 252-4 in reply to India’s 249-5.

India restored their series lead in the third match, but only via a narrow 14-run victory.

After being bowled out off the last ball of their innings, India posted 223 – led by Abhishek Sharma’s 69 off 30 balls.

Arshdeep Singh claimed three wickets as West Indies were restricted to 209-7.

What happened in the last India-West Indies T20?

It was time for the Hope show again in the fourth game of the T20 tour, as the wicketkeeper-batter hit his second century of the series.

The tourists struck 247-3, having been put in, with Hope hitting an unbeaten 102.

His nine sixes and four fours were a record tally for a West Indies batter in a T20 International.

The total was the second-highest first innings score in T20s against India, trailing England’s 257-3 in Southampton this year.

Opener Sanju Samson’s 56 off 23 balls set India off to a good start, but Keemo Paul’s five-wicket haul led West Indies to a 24-run series levelling win.

What did Shai Hope joke about his Player of the Match awards?

Hope joked after the fourth T20 that he was worried he may ⁠have to fork ⁠out excess baggage fees after picking up his third Player of the Match award on their tour of India.

“To be honest, they are a bit heavy, and we have got to look at the luggage weight,” he quipped after the win.

“I think we are going to have some problems going back home.”

Predicted India team lineup

Abhishek Sharma, Sanju Samson (w), Ishan Kishan, Shreyas Iyer (c), Tilak Varma, Naman Dhir, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Axar Patel, Prince Yadav, Mayank Yadav, Arshdeep Singh

Predicted West Indies team lineup

Shai Hope (c and w), Jewel Andrew, Shimron Hetmyer, Rovman Powell, Sherfane Rutherford, Romario Shepherd, Roston Chase, Shamar Springer, Keemo Paul, Shamar Joseph, Gudakesh Motie

Coworker alerted police after receiving disturbing messages from 19-year-old suspect.

A ‌teenager arrested in a Chicago suburb had shared a document expressing ⁠white supremacist ⁠views and outlined an alleged plan to carry out a mass shooting, potentially targeting a Hindu place of worship, police in the US state of Illinois have said.

Alexandros Paporakis, 19, of Palatine, was arrested on Sunday after an individual reported receiving concerning electronic communications from him, Palatine police said on Wednesday. It was not ⁠immediately clear whether he had legal representation.

Detectives searched Paporakis’s home and recovered a rifle, multiple loaded rifle magazines and hundreds of additional rounds of rifle ammunition.

“Among the recovered items was a tactical vest containing body armor and a patch displaying imagery associated with white supremacist extremism,” a police statement said.

Paporakis’s coworker reportedly told police that he openly identified himself as a white supremacist at work and said he “couldn’t wait” to kill Indian people, according to prosecutors from the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office.

Detectives recovered a document called “Why I fought: A.K.A.: (Aurora Shooter’s Manifesto)” which had sentiments expressing white supremacist and extremist ideologies, referencing violence towards South Asians, specifically Indians.

Authorities believed Paporakis was planning to carry out his attack on Sunday, possibly targeting a Hindu temple in Aurora, 40 miles (65km) southwest of Palatine.

“However, the specific intended location has not been confirmed and remains under ⁠investigation,” the police said, adding the FBI was assisting in the probe.

Police said Paporakis is facing felony charges of “making a terrorist threat” and possessing an unlawful weapon.

The suspect appeared for a detention hearing on Wednesday and his next court appearance is scheduled for the end of October.

Human rights advocates said hate against South Asians has surged in the United States in recent years due to rising anti-immigration policies and a rise in white supremacist ideology.