DAILY FROM: AHMEDABAD, CHANDIGARH, DELHI, JAIPUR, KOLKATA, LUCKNOW, MUMBAI, NAGPUR, PATNA, PUNE, VADODARA JOURNALISM OF COURAGE THURSDAY, JUNE 26, 2025, NEW DELHI, LATE CITY, 22 PAGES They looked and looked for answers. 42 years later, got a postmortem report Autopsy showed Chanderwati was shot in the head on Dec 2, 1976, when police cracked down on sterilisation protests. She does not figure in any records ABHIMANYU HAZARIKA PIPLI (SONIPAT), JUNE 25 THE POSTMORTEM report describes a “well-built dead body”, dressed in a green shirt, yellow salwar and red dupatta, leather juttis on her feet, and a white metal kada (bracelet) each on her two wrists, with two additional glass bangles on the right. It also mentions a fracture in the skull, left by a metallic bullet. That is all that the family of Chanderwati has to go on as to what happened to the 30-yearold mother of four when police, trying to rein in protests against the Indira Gandhi government’s forced sterilisation drive, surrounded their village Pipli in Sonipat district of Haryana on December 2, 1976. For 42 years, the family didn’t haveeventhat,oranyotherrecord of Chanderwati’s death, only acquiringtheautopsyreportin2018 after running pillar to post. Says Chanderwati’s nephew Surender Singh, 38: “We had to make several rounds of Chandigarh, put multiple complaints on the Chief Minister’s portal, and keep pushing.” The blank editorial in The Indian Express after the Proclamation THEEMERGENCY 50YEARSON Itsshadow—andlight AN EXPRESS SERIES BUSINESS AS USUAL BY UNNY MORE REPORTS, PAGES 6, 7 THE WORLD INDIAN-ORIGIN ZOHRAN MAMDANI SET TO WIN NYC’S DEMOCRATIC MAYORAL PRIMARY Zohran Mamdani with parents Mahmood Mamdani and Mira Nair, wife Rama Duwaji. Reuters PAGE 16 EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE NEW DELHI, JUNE 25 FOUR MONTHS ago, Rekha Gupta was picked to lead the BJP government in Delhi, marking a return to power for the party after 27 years in the city. A threetime councillor and a first-time MLA, she is now the face of a government that has promised to make Delhi the capital that India can be proud of. On Thursday, the Chief Minister will be the guest at Express Adda in Delhi. No stranger to the city's politics, Gupta started out as a student leader with the ABVP in the early1990sandwentontoserve as president of the Delhi CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 ‘TIRANGA ON MY SHOULDER, ALL OF YOU WITH ME’ ‘WHAT A RIDE’ Dragon with Shukla, 3 others to dock with ISS at 4.30 pm today NEW DELHI, JUNE 25 CABINET PASSES RESOLUTION ON EMERGENCY Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta AN INDIAN RETURNS TO SPACE AFTER 41 YEARS: AMITABH SINHA & ANONNA DUTT CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 Delhi CM Rekha Gupta is guest at Adda today `7.00 (`8 RAIPUR, `15 SRINAGAR) WWW.INDIANEXPRESS.COM SINCE 1932 GROUP CAPTAIN Shubhanshu Shukla embarked on the most consequential flight of his life Wednesday,takingoff,alongwith threeothers,intheAxiom-4mission to the International Space Station. This makes him only the second Indian to travel to space. A fighter pilot and test pilot with the Indian Air Force, with more than 2,000 hours of flying experience, Shukla is the designated pilot for the Crew Dragon spacecraft that took off from NASA’sKennedy SpaceCenterin Cape Canaveral, Florida exactly at noon India time. After a 28-hour journey throughspace,theDragonspacecraft will dock with the International Space Station around 4.30 pm India time Thursday,allowingthefourastronauts to transfer to the only permanent research laboratory in space where they will spend the nexttwoweeks,carryingoutscientificexperimentsandengaging in science outreach events. Shukla’s feat comes 41 years after Squadron Leader Rakesh Sharma — he later retired as WingCommander—travelledto space on the then Soviet Union’s Soyuz T-11 spacecraft and spent about eight days on board the Salyut 7 space station, one of the Sovietforerunnerstothecurrent International Space Station. Two other astronauts on the Axiom-4 mission, Slawosz Uznanski-Wisniewski from Poland and Tibor Kapu of Hungary, are also marking the return of their respective countries to space after more than fourdecades.For thisreason, the CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 Shubhanshu Shukla (second from left) with (from left) Hungary’s Tibor Kapu, US’s Peggy Whitson and Poland's Slawosz Uznanski-Wisniewski aboard the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft on Wednesday. @SpaceX via PTI A Falcon 9 rocket carrying the Axiom-4 crew lifts off from Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39A, on a mission to the International Space Station, in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Wednesday. Reuters THE EDITORIAL PAGE SECONDVOYAGER Shubhanshu Shukla's experience will provide critical inputs to the country's space missions, especially Gaganyaan PAGE10 EXPLAINED INDIA’SSPACE PROGRAMME: A NEW PHASEBEGINS PAGE 15 ‘Papa, kar ke aata hoon, chinta na karo’: Shukla to parents before liftoff MANISH SAHU LUCKNOW, JUNE 25 HOURS BEFORE he became only the second Indian to go to space, Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla had a brief conversation with his parents, who, like any parent on their child’s big day, were a mix of excitement and anxiousness. His father, Shambhu, and mother, Asha, woke up around 2:30 am, counting down the hours until liftoff. “We spoke to Shubhanshu around 4 am, and he said, ‘Papa kar ke aata hoon. Aap chinta na karo’ (Papa, I’ll go CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 Shubhanshu Shukla’s parents Shambhu Shukla and Asha Shukla in Lucknow on Wednesday. Vishal Srivastav