The Daily Catch-Up: Deluge, Diljit and other top stories of the day

5 min readUpdated: Jul 6, 2026 07:50 PM IST

Diljit Dosanjh appears unbothered by the paradox surrounding the Jaswant Singh Khalra film. (Credits: Diljit Dosanjh/Instagram)

Dear Reader,

Each weekday, The Daily Catch-Up sifts through the day’s news so you do not have to. From geopolitics to courtrooms, from classrooms to tech launches — we bring you the stories that matter, in plain language and without ceremony. Let us begin.

The Daily Catch-Up: Rain devastation in Maharashtra and other stories

10 dead, red alert issued: Mumbai’s monsoon woes are far from over

The city’s rain death toll has climbed to ten, and officials are asking residents to stay home — a request that carries unusual weight when the roads themselves have become the hazard. The first monsoon closure of the Mumbai-Pune Expressway’s missing link has also added to the chaos on one of Maharashtra’s busiest corridors.

11-year-old girl’s body found in pond; Bengal’s Baruipur simmers

The discovery of a child’s body in a pond, and the mob violence that followed, has turned a Bengal neighbourhood into a pressure cooker that local authorities are struggling to keep from boiling over.

Delhi woman dead, husband arrested: The dowry case behind Akriti Suttar’s death

A woman is dead, her husband is in custody, and the case has put the machinery of dowry harassment back in an uncomfortable spotlight in the capital.

CCTV cracked it: How Shimla school administrator Manisha Mittal’s murder led to her brother

A live CCTV feed and a family member in custody — the details of a school administrator’s murder in Shimla are raising questions that go well beyond a single crime.

Sri Ganganagar gangrape: 14 arrested, hotels demolished — but the viral video isn’t from Rajasthan

Rajasthan police have made 14 arrests and demolished hotels in connection with the gangrape of a minor, even as they say the viral video that inflamed outrage originated in a different state entirely.

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Modi backs Nitin Nabin; Kejriwal’s ‘who are you?’ jibe sparks a row

The BJP’s new organisational appointment has done what such appointments rarely do — drawn the opposition into a fight about the appointment itself.

Uddhav’s Hindutva reset: How the Ayodhya row gave him an unexpected opening

The Ram temple donation scandal has handed Uddhav Thackeray something his party badly needed — a Hindutva grievance that doesn’t belong to the BJP.

Prashant Kishor eyes Bankipur bypoll: The strategist steps onto the field he once only read

The man who has won elections for others is now preparing to contest one himself — and Bihar’s Bankipur seat will tell us whether the theory holds up in practice.

Rajya Sabha bypolls in West Bengal: What’s at stake after the TMC split

The upper house seats falling vacant in the wake of the TMC’s fragmentation have set up a test of political arithmetic that neither faction can afford to lose.

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Armed forces want more Agniveers kept on: A quiet but significant shift in the scheme’s logic

The military’s request to retain more Agniveers beyond their four-year term suggests the scheme’s original architecture is being quietly renegotiated from within.

US pushes countries to skip Khamenei’s funeral: Diplomatic pressure with a Tehran backdrop

Washington ran a quiet campaign to thin the attendance at a state funeral — a novel form of pressure that says as much about the limits of the Iran deal as it does about protocol.

Netanyahu invokes India’s 1.4 billion to push back on Vance’s ‘only ally’ remark

The Israeli Prime Minister’s pivot to India as a counterweight to American pressure is a signal — but of what, exactly, remains usefully ambiguous.

Opinion: Four geopolitical shifts from the Iran conflict that India cannot afford to miss

The West Asia crisis has reshuffled alignments in ways that will outlast any ceasefire — and India’s window to act on them may be shorter than it thinks.

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Toyota’s India chief makes the case for ethanol: ‘Fastest, cheapest way to decarbonize’

A carmaker with a stake in the outcome is making an argument that cuts against the electric-vehicle consensus — and it is not entirely wrong.

Neymar’s retirement and Brazil’s reckoning: The samba has gone quiet

Norway’s dismantling of Brazil was not just a result — it was a diagnosis. And Neymar’s exit from international football has given the post-mortem a face.

The making of Haaland: What a small-town Norwegian coach saw that others missed

Before the goals, before the records, there was a coach in Bryne who noticed something about a teenager’s positioning — and decided it was worth fixing.

Diljit reacts to Satluj ban

The film about Jaswant Singh Khalra has been banned — and is being watched anyway. Diljit Dosanjh seems entirely at peace with the contradiction.

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Pics: Inside Aamir Khan’s wedding

Aamir Khan married Gauri Spratt in what was meant to be a quiet ceremony. But we have pictures that say it may not have been that quiet after all.

Amitabh Bachchan paid Rs 15 crore overnight for Ayodhya land: ‘I am from UP’

The speed of the transaction and the sentiment attached to it say something interesting about what Ayodhya has come to mean.

Raghav Chadha’s watch collection, priced and pictured

The AAP leader’s wrist has become a talking point.

The Daily Catch-Up is published Monday to Friday by The Indian Express.