HAVE YOU RECEIVED calls or emails about being the winner of a lottery or the beneficiary in some unknown person’s will? I know of a lady who got a call about a windfall. She rang up her son, an editor with THE WEEK, to tell him the good news. His answer: “Amma, in a world where no one gives us a cup of coffee for free, who would bequeath millions to you or me?” Simple logic.
With lakhs of Indians being swindled of their hard-earned money, this cover story was waiting to be done. The scale of the crime can be understood from just one figure—the Enforcement Directorate has recovered Rs4,725 crore for 14.47 lakh people between January 2021 and March 31, 2025.
One of the five pillars of a safe cyberspace, as highlighted by Union Home Minister Amit Shah, is an aware citizenry. “When people are aware, then cyber criminals cannot go too far,” Shah told Namrata Biji Ahuja, chief of bureau in Delhi. The minister is hitting the nail on the head when he calls for awareness. Then there is greed. In my experience, a deal that is too good to be true is almost always exactly that.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah | Getty Images
And it is not just about money. Shah mentions an instance where his wife showed him a viral video where he is seen talking in Bhojpuri. “I was amazed to see myself speaking languages I don’t know,” the minister said. For the full interview with the minister, please turn to Page 22.
In international coverage, our columnist Anita Pratap looks at German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and how he intends to thwart US President Donald Trump from diminishing Europe into a sideshow.
Our coverage of India’s cross-border woes continues. Major General Gajinder Singh, who had commanded a mountain division on the Line of Actual Control, writes about the China-Pakistan relationship. A relationship that they describe thus: “Higher than the mountains, deeper than the sea, sweeter than honey and harder than steel”. So much poetry to sugarcoat a marriage aimed at containing India.
Chief of Bureau (Chennai) Lakshmi Subramanian sat down with Chief Minister M.K. Stalin for a freewheeling interview where he speaks frankly about the BJP, social schemes, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, linguistic freedom and federal rights.
This week, in @leisure, Deputy News Editor Navin J. Antony brings out the influence of Silicon Valley on Hollywood. On behalf of THE WEEK’s readers, I congratulate Banu Mushtaq for creating history by becoming the first author writing in Kannada to win the International Booker Prize with her short story anthology, Heart Lamp. She was the star of last week’s @leisure.
I’ll stop with Senior Correspondent Nirmal Jovial’s Untold Story on the hunt for the missing Buddha of Kochi. It is an open-ended story of how an excavation for the Water Metro project yielded artefacts that could be linked to the oldest colonial church in India, and how the hunt for the church has now become the quest for a marble Buddha who reportedly is in Britain.
One thing Nirmal missed is that the new Water Metro station in Fort Kochi stands on the site of a coaling station. It was demolished two years ago. According to my sources, the coal shed aka karippura was the biggest east of Suez. Between the Horn of Africa and colonies in the Far East, there is a lot of blue water. So, the steamers called at Kochi for fuel before rounding the cape and slipping into the Strait of Malacca.