DAILY FROM: AHMEDABAD, CHANDIGARH, DELHI, JAIPUR, KOLKATA, LUCKNOW, MUMBAI, NAGPUR, PATNA, PUNE, VADODARA JOURNALISM OF COURAGE FRIDAY, JUNE 27, 2025, LUCKNOW, LATE CITY, 18 PAGES NO JOINT STATEMENT Pahalgam terror attack kept out, Rajnath doesn’t sign SCO draft `6.00 WWW.INDIANEXPRESS.COM SINCE 1932 AXIOM-4 CREW TO SPEND 14 DAYS IN INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION Targets Pak on cross-border terror, says no place for double standards ETAWAH TONSURING INCIDENT Protesters clash with cops, attack vehicles as ‘Learning like a baby, new steps, how to kathavachaks booked Shubhanshu Shukla with other astronauts aboard the International Space Station. @SpaceX/ PTI Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and his Iran counterpart Aziz Nasirzadeh look on as Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif arrives, in Qingdao, China. AP NEW DELHI, JUNE 26 DEFENCE MINISTERS of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation,meetinginQingdao in China, failed to issue a joint statementThursdayafterDefence Minister Rajnath Singh declined tosignthedraftstatementwhich omittedareferencetotheApril22 Pahalgam terror attack in J&K. GovernmentsourcestoldThe IndianExpressthatthedocument, CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 E E X P L A I NE D AMRITA NAYAK DUTTA & SHUBHAJIT ROY Ahead of ● Summit THE MEETING of the SCO Defence Ministers took place weeks after Operation Sindoor which had India striking terror targets in Pakistan and PoK. The SCO leaders are scheduled to meet at the Summit in Tianjin in China this autumn. EXPLAINED,PAGE15 eat’: Shukla, first Indian on board the ISS 7 experiments from India among 60 to be conducted on board for 31 countries ANONNA DUTT & AMITABH SINHA NEW DELHI, JUNE 26 WITH OPEN arms, a beaming Shubhanshu Shukla glided into the International Space Station Thursday evening India time, transferring himself from the Dragon spacecraft that brought him and three others from Earth after a 28-hour journey through space. GroupCaptainShukla,thepilot of the Dragon spacecraft, is the first Indian on board the ISS. He was the second to enter the station, after mission commander Peggy Whitson of the US, shortly after 5.45 pm. The Dragon had connected with the ISS, a permanent research laboratory in space, 105 minutes earlier in a smooth docking manoeuvre. At the time of docking, both the ISS and the spacecraft were travelling at speeds of nearly 26,500 km an hour. The incoming astronauts — Whitson, Shukla, Slawosz Uznanski-Wisniewski of Poland and Tibor Kapu of Hungary — were welcomed with hugs by the astronauts already stationed BUSINESS AS USUAL BY UNNY there. The ISS was already home to seven astronauts, members of the 73rd expedition to the station that began on April 19 and will continue until November. With the addition of four astronauts from the Axiom-4 mission, who will stay there for two weeks,ISSisnowhosting11people. Operational since 1998, the ISS is comparable to a six-bedroom US apartment in size and cancomfortablyaccommodatea dozenastronautssimultaneously. Shukla and the other incomingastronautswereofferedaliquid diet to refresh themselves as CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE LUCKNOW, JUNE 26 THECONTROVERSYovertonsuring of the head of two kathavachaks (religious speakers)belongingtotheYadavcommunity by upper-caste men in Uttar Pradesh's Etawah district snowballed into violence on Thursday when a large number of people protesting against the registration of an FIR against the duo allegedly pelted the police with stones and attacked their vehicles, officers said. The clash occurred when the protesters were trying to enter Dadarpur village in Mahewa block where the purported tonsuring incident took place on June 21, it is learnt. The FIR against the two was registered earlier in the day on the charges Police personnel in Dadarpur village in Etawah on Thursday. PTI of “fraud” for hiding their caste and identifying themselves as Brahmin. Later, the police arrested at least 19 people allegedly involved in the clash. Meanwhile, Tourism Minister Jaiveer Singh claimed that the incident was a fallout of “provocative” statements by CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 IN CONVERSATION WITH DELHI CM Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta with Vandita Mishra, National Opinion Editor, The Indian Express, at the Express Adda in New Delhi on Thursday. Renuka Puri A father’s fight to ensure son’s death wasn’t lost in the darkness Rajan was taken away by police on March 1, 1976. Family waited 6 years before police admitted he died in custody The blank editorial in The Indian Express after the Proclamation THEEMERGENCY 50YEARSON Itsshadow—andlight AN EXPRESS SERIES Warrier’ssearchforwhathappened to Rajan, followed by his fight for justice against those responsibleforhisdeathincustody during the Emergency, led to the first habeas corpus in such cases after the provision was lifted, the ouster of a chief minister, an SHAJU PHILIP THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, JUNE 26 “LET AT least my invisible son know that his father never shut the door.” T V Eachara Warrier, who made that plaintive appeal, held true to his word — he never shut the door, and ensured his son Rajan, who died incognito, could not be rendered invisible. CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 Rajan was a student of Regional Engineering College (now NIT), Calicut MORE REPORTS PAGE 9 ‘Feels like home’: Maharashtra orphanage to Denmark, conductor returns to perform PAGE 1 ANCHOR SUANSHU KHURANA NEW DELHI, JUNE 26 GROWING UP in Thisted, a tiny Denmark town known for Langdos(alargeBronzeAgeburial mound) and a Romanesque church from the 13th century, Copenhagen-based music conductorMariaBadstue’sworldalways felt simple yet strange. Maria Badstue rehearses at the National Centre for Performing Arts in Mumbai. Amit Chakravarty While her name sat nice and easy in Scandinavian conversations, the mirror revealed a different story. The person who stared back at her — a brown girl with brown eyes and dark hair — didn’t look anything like her “White parents and brothers” or everyone else around her. Badstuewasjustfivemonths old when she was adopted by a Danish couple — a carpenter fatherandacookmotherwhoprepared food for the mentally ill — from an orphanage in CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 Lucknow