Web Desk

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan&#39;s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar on Sunday conveyed condolences to Saudi Arabia following a helicopter crash that killed 14 Saudi citizens, expressing sympathy on behalf of Pakistan&#39;s leadership and people.&nbsp;According to Pakistan&#39;s Foreign Office, FM Dar spoke by telephone with Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud and extended condolences on behalf of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, Chief of Army Staff and Chief of Defense Forces Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir, the Government of Pakistan and the people of Pakistan.&nbsp;FM Dar expressed &quot;sincere condolences&quot; over the &quot;sad incident of a helicopter crash in Saudi Arabia which resulted in the loss of 14 precious lives.&quot;&nbsp;Prince Faisal thanked Dar for the message of condolence and &quot;deeply appreciated the brotherly gesture,&quot; the Foreign Office said.&nbsp;The call came after a helicopter belonging to Saudi state oil giant Aramco crashed in Ras Tanura in the kingdom&#39;s Eastern Province, killing all 14 Saudi nationals on board. Saudi authorities have launched an investigation into the cause of the crash.&nbsp;The two foreign ministers also reviewed recent regional developments and expressed concern over the evolving situation.&nbsp;&quot;The two leaders held in-depth discussion on recent developments in the region and expressed deep concern on the evolving situation,&quot; the Foreign Office said.&nbsp;FM Dar reaffirmed Pakistan&#39;s commitment to supporting regional peace efforts.&nbsp;&quot;DPM/FM reiterated Pakistan&#39;s resolve to continue working towards prevalence of peace in the region in pursuance of the &#39;Islamabad MoU&#39;,&quot; the statement added.&nbsp;The Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), jointly mediated by Pakistan and Qatar, provides a framework for implementing a ceasefire between the United States and Iran and advancing negotiations on broader regional security issues.&nbsp;During the conversation, Prince Faisal also informed Dar that he plans to visit Pakistan at the earliest on mutually convenient dates. Dar welcomed the proposed visit and expressed hope that it would take place soon, the Foreign Office added. With inputs from AFP

Foreign Affairs

Pakistani FM conveys condolences to Saudi Arabia after a helicopter crash killed 14 people, while both sides also discussed regional developments and reaffirmed support for peace efforts under the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding.


 Pakistan conveys condolences after Saudi helicopter crash kills 14 people

STOCKHOLM: Several people were injured, including one seriously, when lightning struck a tree at an amusement park in southern Sweden on Sunday, the park and officials said. &quot;Today we had a severe thunderstorm over Tosselilla, which led to several lightning strikes directly in the area. This has resulted in a few people being injured,&quot; the Toselilla Sommarland park said in a post to Facebook. It initially said there were no serious injuries, but local health officials later said a 45-year-old woman was in hospital with &quot;serious injuries&quot;. Two others were taken to hospital by ambulance, while two adults and five children were seeking treatment. &quot;All with minor injuries,&quot; regional health authority Region Skane said in a statement. Public broadcaster SVT reported that the amusement park had anticipated the storm and made sure no visitors were on the rides or in the waterpark pools. However, lightning struck a tree on the site, and a group passing nearby was hit by falling debris. The Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (SMHI) on Sunday issued warnings for large parts of southern Sweden as thunderstorms and heavy rain swept across the region.

Europe

Several people, including a 45-year-old woman seriously injured, were hurt after lightning struck a tree at Tosselilla Sommarland in southern Sweden during a thunderstorm. Others suffered minor injuries as falling debris hit a nearby group, officials said.


Several injured in lightning strike at Swedish amusement park

NOTTINGHAM: Ben Stokes has announced his retirement as England Test captain and from international cricket, the England and Wales Cricket Board said in a statement issued Sunday.&nbsp;Stokes will end his England career following the conclusion of the ongoing third Test against New Zealand in Nottingham&nbsp;As news spread of the 35-year-old all-rounder&#39;s decision, he received a standing ovation from the crowd at Trent Bridge and there were more cheers shortly afterwards when he dismissed New Zealand&#39;s Zak Foulkes on the fourth day of the third and deciding Test of a three-match series.&nbsp;Sunday&#39;s announcement came after Stokes returned to England duty at Trent Bridge after being omitted from a 253-run defeat in the second Test at the Oval for breaking a midnight curfew, alongside teammate Gus Atkinson, while celebrating at a London nightclub following the first-Test win over New Zealand.&nbsp;&quot;Ben Stokes leaves the international game as one of England&#39;s greatest ever cricketers and one of the defining figures of his generation,&quot; said ECB chairman Richard Thompson.&nbsp;&quot;His performances under pressure, his relentless competitiveness and his ability to produce the extraordinary when it matters most have given me and millions of other fans memories that will endure forever.&nbsp;&quot;Whether inspiring victory in the biggest moments -- not least driving England to World Cup wins in 2019 and 2022 and his heroic Ashes innings at Headingley -- or leading the Test team with courage and conviction, Ben has been a talismanic figure in English cricket.&quot;

Cricket

England's Ben Stokes announced his retirement as Test captain and from international cricket on Sunday. ECB hailed him as one of England's greatest cricketers and an inspirational leader.

England captain Stokes to retire from international cricket

TOMBLAINE: A civilian aircraft carrying skydivers crashed near the eastern French town of Tomblaine on Sunday, killing all 11 people on board, local authorities said, in one of France&#39;s deadliest light aircraft accidents. The crash killed five instructors, five students, and the pilot, said Yves Seguy, the prefect of the eastern department of Meurthe-et-Moselle. &quot;There were no bystanders among the victims,&quot; he added, speaking at a press conference. The aircraft, registered in Germany, crashed in a grassy area near the runway of the Nancy-Essey aerodrome, close to a residential area and two roads, an AFP journalist reported. The cause of the incident was not immediately clear. Medical and psychological support teams were caring for relatives of the victims who were present at the airfield, as well as other witnesses. A technical investigation had been opened, said Amaury Lacote, deputy public prosecutor in the eastern city of Nancy. Police urged people on the social media platform X to &quot;strictly avoid&quot; the area around the airport to allow emergency services access. French Interior Minister Laurent Nunez is expected to visit the scene of the accident in the late afternoon, according to his staff.

A civilian aircraft carrying skydivers crashed near the eastern French town of Tomblaine on Sunday, killing all 11 people on board, including five instructors, five students and the pilot. Authorities have launched an investigation into the cause of the crash.



Civilian plane crash kills 11 in France: local authorities

Saqib Tanveer

ISLAMABAD: New Delhi has a decades-long pattern of walking away from, modifying, or unilaterally freezing its international obligations whenever global agreements clash with its strategic ambitions. A Pakistan TV Digital investigation has found that India has bypassed or violated over 100 international commitments. New Delhi&#39;s decision to hold the 65-year-old&nbsp;<a href="https://pakistantv.com/article/indias-suspension-of-indus-waters-treaty-is-worlds-problem" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);" rel="noopener noreferrer">Indus Waters Treaty (IWT)</a> in abeyance last year has put this pattern back in focus. The research sorts the violations, suspensions, and delays into three categories: water and border diplomacy, investment and trade treaties, and multilateral frameworks and diplomatic immunities. Water and borders India placed the 65-year-old water sharing agreement with Pakistan into &quot;abeyance&quot; on April 23, 2025, following a regional security crisis. The Court of Arbitration at The Hague rejected India&#39;s argument for suspension just two months later, and by May 2026, the court had finalized its ruling on water control. India called that ruling null and void. This was not the first time India had broken an agreement involving Pakistan. India had already violated the 1972 Simla Agreement by launching Operation Meghdoot on the Siachen Glacier in 1984, and again when it revoked the special status of Jammu and Kashmir in August 2019. Legal experts cite both as earlier departures from the spirit of the Simla Agreement. The pattern is not limited to Pakistan. The 1950 Indo-Nepal Treaty requires bilateral consultations during regional security crises, but New Delhi has repeatedly failed to coordinate with Kathmandu. Bangladesh faced a similar wait. Dhaka ratified the 1974 Land Boundary Agreement with India immediately, while India dragged its feet for four decades, citing domestic legal compulsions. Thousands of residents in border enclaves were left effectively stateless, without basic civil rights, until the agreement was finally implemented in 2015. Even the 1950 Liaquat-Nehru Pact, meant to protect&nbsp;<a href="https://pakistantv.com/article/how-one-indian-states-supermajority-turned-muslims-into-political-targets" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);" rel="noopener noreferrer">religious minorities</a> and their property in both countries, went largely unenforced almost as soon as it was signed. Trade and investment Between 2016 and 2017, India terminated between 58 and 77 Bilateral Investment Treaties in a single sweep, a move intended to protect the state from international lawsuits filed by foreign companies. Tax disputes have proven just as contentious. An international tribunal ruled in September 2020 that India&#39;s retrospective tax demand on Vodafone violated global fair-treatment principles, a ruling that New Delhi fought to avoid enforcing. India also withheld a $1.2 billion arbitration award owed to Cairn Energy until the company began pursuing Indian state assets overseas, forcing a settlement in August 2021. In the long-running Devas-Antrix space sector dispute, international tribunals repeatedly struck down India&#39;s domestic fraud rulings, which the government had invoked to refuse to pay arbitration awards. A World Trade Organization panel ruled against India in October 2019 over its export subsidy programs, finding them inconsistent with global trade rules. The WTO has since established a new dispute panel to examine India&#39;s solar tariffs and domestic content requirements following a challenge from China. India&#39;s agricultural stockholding programs have drawn similar criticism for distorting international crop prices. Diplomatic immunity and international courts India stripped American diplomats of long-held privileges in 2013 after an Indian consular official was arrested in New York. The same year, it refused to accord functional immunity to Italian marines during a maritime dispute. When that crisis escalated, India&#39;s Supreme Court banned the Italian Ambassador from leaving the country, a move legal scholars widely called a direct breach of the Vienna Convention. At the International Court of Justice, India relies on a broad set of legal reservations to limit the court&#39;s jurisdiction over it. One such reservation, the so-called Commonwealth Reservation, allowed India to block a case Pakistan brought in 1999 over the shooting down of an unarmed military patrol plane. India&#39;s approach to human rights treaties follows a similar pattern. The country signed the UN Convention Against Torture in October 1997 but has never ratified it, a delay of nearly three decades. Advocacy groups say this has allowed custodial abuse to continue largely unchecked, shielding domestic security forces from the kind of international accountability that ratification would require. <hr style="line-height: 2;"> The article draws on data from Indian and international media reports, as well as research from international think tanks.

Signing of the Indus Waters Treaty on 19 September 1960, with the Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru (left), Pakistani President Ayub Khan (center), and World Bank Vice President Sir William Iliff (right). (World Bank)

India

A Pakistan TV Digital investigation identifies repeated violations, suspensions and delays by India involving water-sharing, border, trade, investment and diplomatic commitments across more than 100 international agreements.

India violated over 100 international commitments, reveals Pakistan TV Digital's research

PARIS: French health officials said Sunday there had been around 1,000 more deaths than expected during a record-breaking heatwave that has baked much of western Europe for days. &quot;Since June 24, approximately 1,000 <a href="https://www.pakistantv.com/article/at-least-193-mn-in-europe-to-face-temperatures-above-35c-saturday-afp-analysis" target="_blank" style="color:#0073e6;" rel="noopener noreferrer">additional deaths</a> (unconsolidated figures) have been observed compared to the deaths recorded in previous months,&quot; Public Health France said in a statement. The agency said areas under red alert for heat had been particularly badly affected, and 85% of the <a href="https://www.pakistantv.com/article/europe-heatwave-is-price-to-pay-for-fossil-fuel-pollution-un-climate-chief" target="_blank" style="color:#0073e6;" rel="noopener noreferrer">deaths</a> had been those aged 65 and over. The sharpest increases, the agency said, involved people dying at home, especially in the Ile-de-France region that includes Paris and its suburbs. &#39;Likely to be an underestimate&#39;&quot;This observation serves as a reminder of the need for measures of solidarity toward people who are isolated or experiencing profound loneliness, including in highly urbanized areas,&quot; the statement said. The agency stressed that the figures were preliminary and were likely to be an underestimate. The heat eased across France on Sunday after days of punishing temperatures that saw the mercury rising above 40C in many areas.

'Since June 24, approximately 1,000 additional deaths (unconsolidated figures) have been observed compared to the deaths recorded in previous months,' Public Health France said in a statement.

France records around 1,000 excess deaths in heatwave: Health agency

ISLAMABAD: Indian authorities placed farmer union leaders from three states under house arrest Sunday to stop them from joining a youth-led protest movement in New Delhi that has rattled the government and drawn international attention. Security forces detained leaders from Punjab, Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh before they could travel to join the Cockroach Janta Party&#39;s sit-in at Jantar Mantar, the capital&#39;s designated protest ground, according to the Times of India. The detentions came as the movement prepared to launch its &quot;Pradhan Go Back&quot; campaign demanding the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan. How a slur became a movement On May 15, Chief Justice of India Surya Kant compared unemployed youth on social media to &quot;cockroaches&quot; and &quot;parasites of society&quot; during a Supreme Court hearing, according to Al Jazeera. He later said the remark targeted lawyers practicing with fraudulent degrees, not young people broadly. The clarification did not stick. The following day, Abhijeet Dipke, a public relations graduate from Boston University and former Aam Aadmi Party communications strategist, launched the satirical Cockroach Janta Party, according to a deep-dive investigation by BBC. Its Instagram page reached nearly 18 million followers in under a week. The CJP held its first protest at Jantar Mantar on June 6, reported Al Jazeera. By June 20, demonstrators had built a memorial shrine for 17 students who died by suicide amid the scandal-hit NEET-UG medical entrance examination, which was plagued by paper leaks, according to Live Mint. The party&#39;s five demands, listed on its official website, target what it calls structural failures of the Indian state: 1. &nbsp; &nbsp;a ban on retiring Supreme Court judges taking government or parliamentary seats 2. &nbsp; &nbsp;criminal penalties for unauthorized deletion of voter registrations 3. &nbsp; &nbsp;50% women&#39;s representation in Indian parliament and cabinet 4. &nbsp; &nbsp;the cancellation of broadcasting licenses held by media groups owned by Reliance and Adani 5. &nbsp; &nbsp;a 20-year bar on any legislator who switches parties from contesting elections The farmer connection Dipke appealed publicly to farmer unions, arguing students had backed farmers during the 2020-2021 protests that forced the repeal of three agricultural deregulation laws. The Bharatiya Kisan Union and the Samyukta Kisan Morcha (Non-Political) responded with formal support, according to the Deccan Herald. The alliance reflects long-standing rural distress. More than 386,000 people in India&#39;s farming sector died by suicide between 1995 and 2021, according to the National Crime Records Bureau. The NCRB&#39;s 2024 report recorded 10,546 such deaths. Maharashtra alone accounted for 37.6% of the national total, driven by debt among cotton and sugarcane farmers. Farmer unions have separately demanded a legally binding minimum crop price guarantee since 2022, when they rejected a government review panel as biased toward pro-reform interests, according to the Times of India. State response The government&#39;s reaction has been brutal. The Indian Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology blocked the CJP&#39;s account on X under Section 69(A) of the Information Technology Act, citing national security, according to The Hindu. Dipke has challenged the order in the Delhi High Court. Education Minister Pradhan called the CJP a &quot;B-team of terrorists,&quot; reported Hindustan Times. Dipke responded that the minister had &quot;the blood of 17 students on his hands.&quot; Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi demanded a public apology, according to Hindustan Times. Delhi Police declared the protest&#39;s overnight extension illegal and temporarily cut access to electricity, food, and water at the site, according to Metro Vaartha, a digital outlet that has extensively tracked the Cockroach Janta Party. Activists responded by launching a &quot;Diaper Donation Drive,&quot; writing resignation demands on diapers addressed to the Ministry of Education, reported Live Mint.

An Indian Youth Congress (IYC) activist acts as a farmer committing suicide during a protest following the completion of two years of the Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in New Delhi. (AFP)

Indian authorities detained farmer leaders ahead of a New Delhi protest linking student concerns, exam controversies and broader government grievances.

India detains farmer leaders ahead of Cockroach Janta Party protest in New Delhi

MARREE: Camels with &quot;a bit of fire in them&quot; raced in a remote Australian outback town this weekend at an annual event celebrating the desert beasts first imported in the mid-19th century. Hundreds of spectators descended on Marree, which has a population of 65 and lies nearly 600 kilometres north of the South Australian capital Adelaide, for a 13-race spectacle on Saturday known as the Marree Camel Cup. More than 10,000 camels were imported into Australia from 1840, many of them released into the wild with the development of railways and then the arrival of motor vehicles in the 1920s. Now, estimates of the wild camel population range from 300,000 to a million animals. Trainer Kyrraley Woodhouse, who started camel racing professionally in 2013, said most of her camels had been taken from the wild to run in the Marree event, which drew more than a dozen competitors. Picking the right animal is key. &quot;You would want a little bit of temper, a little bit of fire in them &ndash; a sort of splashy look in the eye,&quot; Woodhouse told AFP. &quot;They want to be wary of you a little bit but not, like, aggressive,&quot; she added. &quot;We want something sort of like a racehorse, a little bit high strung, a little bit forward &ndash; something that&#39;s got a heart, that&#39;s going to run.&quot; This year&#39;s Marree Camel Cup winner was Young Gun, ridden by Patrick Dennis. Camels in the outback compete with stock for food, destroy fences, foul waterholes and damage Indigenous cultural sites, authorities say. Without management, camel populations could double every eight years, South Australia&#39;s primary industries department says. Camel numbers are kept in check by mustering, shooting and trapping at water points. Australia also exports a small number of live camels: 68 so far in 2026 heading to Malaysia and Indonesia.

Trainers Kyrraley (L) and Tom Woodhouse (R) tend to their camels a day before the Marree Australasian Camel Cup meet in the South Australian outback town of Marree on June 26, 2026. (AFP)

Australasia

Hundreds of spectators descended on Marree for a 13-race spectacle on Saturday known as the Marree Camel Cup.

'High-strung' camels race in Australian outback

Pakistan TV Satellite

Islamabad: Dr. Roxolana Zig&oacute;n, Director of the Scientific Centre for International and Strategic Research in Moscow, said on Sunday that Pakistan should capitalize on its growing diplomatic success to raise international awareness about what she described as India&rsquo;s &ldquo;weaponization&rdquo; of the Indus Waters Treaty. Speaking to the Pakistan TV at her arrival at Islamabad airport to attend the international seminar titled &ldquo;Indus Waters Treaty: An Instrument of Peace and Regional Stability,&rdquo; to be held on June 30, Dr. Zig&oacute;n said the recent actions taken by India in frustration after Pakistan&rsquo;s diplomatic success on the international stage.<div class="fr-embed"><div class="twitter-tweet twitter-tweet-rendered" style="display: flex; max-width: 550px; width: 100%; margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><iframe id="twitter-widget-0" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="true" title="X Post" src="https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-0&features=eyJ0ZndfdGltZWxpbmVfbGlzdCI6eyJidWNrZXQiOltdLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfSwidGZ3X2ZvbGxvd2VyX2NvdW50X3N1bnNldCI6eyJidWNrZXQiOnRydWUsInZlcnNpb24iOm51bGx9LCJ0ZndfdHdlZXRfZWRpdF9iYWNrZW5kIjp7ImJ1Y2tldCI6Im9uIiwidmVyc2lvbiI6bnVsbH0sInRmd19yZWZzcmNfc2Vzc2lvbiI6eyJidWNrZXQiOiJvbiIsInZlcnNpb24iOm51bGx9LCJ0ZndfZm9zbnJfc29mdF9pbnRlcnZlbnRpb25zX2VuYWJsZWQiOnsiYnVja2V0Ijoib24iLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfSwidGZ3X21peGVkX21lZGlhXzE1ODk3Ijp7ImJ1Y2tldCI6InRyZWF0bWVudCIsInZlcnNpb24iOm51bGx9LCJ0ZndfZXhwZXJpbWVudHNfY29va2llX2V4cGlyYXRpb24iOnsiYnVja2V0IjoxMjA5NjAwLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfSwidGZ3X3Nob3dfYmlyZHdhdGNoX3Bpdm90c19lbmFibGVkIjp7ImJ1Y2tldCI6Im9uIiwidmVyc2lvbiI6bnVsbH0sInRmd19kdXBsaWNhdGVfc2NyaWJlc190b19zZXR0aW5ncyI6eyJidWNrZXQiOiJvbiIsInZlcnNpb24iOm51bGx9LCJ0ZndfdXNlX3Byb2ZpbGVfaW1hZ2Vfc2hhcGVfZW5hYmxlZCI6eyJidWNrZXQiOiJvbiIsInZlcnNpb24iOm51bGx9LCJ0ZndfdmlkZW9faGxzX2R5bmFtaWNfbWFuaWZlc3RzXzE1MDgyIjp7ImJ1Y2tldCI6InRydWVfYml0cmF0ZSIsInZlcnNpb24iOm51bGx9LCJ0ZndfbGVnYWN5X3RpbWVsaW5lX3N1bnNldCI6eyJidWNrZXQiOnRydWUsInZlcnNpb24iOm51bGx9LCJ0ZndfdHdlZXRfZWRpdF9mcm9udGVuZCI6eyJidWNrZXQiOiJvbiIsInZlcnNpb24iOm51bGx9fQ%3D%3D&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=2071138841680105780&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fmain.d1wrm1qseko1cp.amplifyapp.com%2Farticles%2F&sessionId=cab1ae6d45510fc619e9bfc099887757024f9043&theme=light&widgetsVersion=6a3ad42b224df%3A1778106238597&width=550px" style="position: static; visibility: visible; width: 550px; height: 648px; display: block; flex-grow: 1;"></iframe></div></div>Since India announced its illegal unilateral move to suspend the implementation of the Indus Waters Treaty, Pakistan has consistently termed the action illegal and a violation of international law, raising the issue at regional and global forums while urging the international community to uphold the treaty as a cornerstone of regional peace, water security, and rules-based cooperation. &ldquo;All the actions that the Indian side is undertaking at the present moment are highlighting the great diplomatic success Pakistan has recently achieved,&rdquo; she said. Dr. Zig&oacute;n said it was not surprising that Indian policymakers were moving toward what she termed the weaponization of the Indus Waters Treaty, adding that Pakistan should continue pursuing the issue through diplomatic channels to make the international community more aware of the situation. Describing the present circumstances as a &ldquo;historical momentum,&rdquo; she said the development was significant not only for Pakistan but also for the international community. She said Pakistan had played a significant diplomatic role and achieved what she described as a &ldquo;tremendous breakthrough,&rdquo; contributing not only to security in South Asia but also to broader stability in the Middle East.

SAT News Desk

Dr Zigón said it was not surprising that Indian policymakers were moving toward what she termed the weaponization of the Indus Waters Treaty, adding that Pakistan should continue pursuing the issue through diplomatic channels to make the international community more aware of the situation.

Pakistan should turn diplomatic success into global support on Indus Waters Treaty: Dr Zigón

ISLAMABAD: Indian police raided a hotel room hours before dawn on Saturday and found the answer to one of the country&#39;s most persistent governance failures sitting on a table: stolen exam questions, ready to be sold, for a test that 600,000 people had spent months preparing to take. The cancellation of Maharashtra state&#39;s Teacher Eligibility Test, a licensing exam that determines whether working teachers keep their jobs, is the latest episode in what investigators and lawmakers describe as a systemic breakdown of India&#39;s public examination infrastructure, one that has now disrupted tens of millions of candidates across multiple national and state-level tests in the past two years alone. Officers acting on a confidential tip raided the Diamond Hotel in Bhiwandi, a town outside Mumbai, and arrested three men who had traveled from India&#39;s capital, Delhi, specifically to sell the papers, according to The Indian Express. Police summoned senior education officials to the scene. The seized documents matched the sealed exam packet word for word. According to the Times of India, the syndicate had expected to collect roughly $180,000 for the stolen materials. Maharashtra&#39;s Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis ordered a 20-member investigation team to trace how the papers left official custody. Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde said the state would seek to apply its organized crime statute against the masterminds of the operation, as per The New Indian Express. Not the first time The Maharashtra leak did not occur in isolation. In 2026, India&#39;s national medical entrance examination (NEET-UG, which determines entry to the country&#39;s medical universities) was cancelled and re-administered after insiders leaked questions during the translation phase, the process by which papers are converted from English into regional languages, The Indian Express reported. A government-contracted headmistress in the western city of Pune recalled physics questions from memory and passed them to a private coaching network. Chemistry and biology translators committed parallel breaches for financial payment, The Indian Express reported. Thirteen people were arrested, and a federal investigation was launched. The scale of what is at stake helps explain why the fraud market exists and thrives. According to the policy research body NEXT IAS, more than 2.27 million candidates sat the 2026 NEET-UG exam, competing for roughly 120,000 university medical places, a ratio of nearly 19 applicants per seat. A government job or a medical degree represents, for most families, the primary path out of poverty, according to a policy analysis published by the Centre for Competition, Inclusion and Economic Regulation. Yet the probability of being caught and convicted remains low enough to make the gamble attractive. An investigation by The Indian Express into 45 major paper-leak cases between 2002 and 2025 found convictions in only two. Of 1,658 people arrested across that period, just 925 (roughly 55%) were ever formally charged. Testing agency shielded from government accountabilityThe body responsible for administering most national exams, the National Testing Agency, operates not as a statutory government authority but as a registered civil society organization under a 19th-century law, a legal status that limits its parliamentary accountability and shields it from routine government audits, according to Deccan Herald. As of late 2024, the agency employed 22 seconded civil servants, 38 contract workers, and 138 outsourced staff to run more than 18 major national examinations annually for over 12.5 million candidates, Deccan Herald reported. That dependence on private contractors has introduced its own vulnerabilities. Investigative reporting by Newslaundry found that companies awarded examination contracts by the agency included one firm declared ineligible by a central government training authority in 2020 and another blacklisted by a state energy company and separately banned by the testing agency itself after being linked to remote hacking at an exam center. A 2026 parliamentary inquiry found that India&#39;s national school board had systematically weakened its own contractor screening standards, including the removal of clauses that barred previously sanctioned firms from bidding, according to The Hindu. Student suicides on the riseThe institutional failures carry a measurable human cost. India&#39;s National Crime Records Bureau recorded 14,488 student suicides in 2024, accounting for 8.5% of all suicides in the country that year, according to the Bureau&#39;s official data. Research published in the medical journal PMC found that 73.4% of exam-linked student deaths were associated with high-stakes competitive entrance tests, with the majority of victims between 15 and 20 years old. The private test-preparation industry (which NEXT IAS valued at the equivalent of $7 billion in 2024 and projected to nearly double by 2028) has drawn regulatory warnings for exploiting student anxiety, according to India&#39;s Central Consumer Protection Authority. The Indian parliament passed anti-cheating legislation in 2024, imposing up to 10 years in prison and fines exceeding $120,000 for organized fraud syndicates, according to PRS India, the country&#39;s independent legislative research body. The northern state of Uttar Pradesh added parallel legislation making life imprisonment possible for paper-leak offenses, PRS India reported. Punitive laws not enoughHowever, researchers at PRS India cautioned that punitive laws do not address the physical and administrative vulnerabilities that allow papers to be stolen before any penalty is applied. A government-appointed expert panel recommended encrypting question papers and transmitting them digitally to exam centers, where they would be printed inside locked, monitored rooms only hours before candidates are seated. This, they argue, will eliminate the transport-and-storage chain that investigators identified as the primary point of compromise, according to The Indian Express. As of the May 2026 national medical examination, most of those recommendations had not been carried out, the Economic Times reported. Candidates affected by Saturday&#39;s cancellation in Maharashtra will not be required to re-register or pay additional fees, according to the Maharashtra State Council of Examinations. A new examination date will be set within approximately three weeks, the council said.

Police personnel check documents of medical students before the NEET-UG re-examination in Guwahati, India, on June 21, 2026. (AFP)

A teacher eligibility exam in Maharashtra was suspended hours before administration after a reported security breach amid recurring exam leak concerns.

Pakistan conveys condolences after Saudi helicopter crash kills 14 people

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Several injured in lightning strike at Swedish amusement park

Pakistan conveys condolences after Saudi helicopter crash kills 14 people

England captain Stokes to retire from international cricket

Civilian plane crash kills 11 in France: local authorities

India violated over 100 international commitments, reveals Pakistan TV Digital's research