Today, in a small coastal town in Odisha, a king will pick up a golden broom and sweep the road like a servant.
This is Rath Yatra, and it may be the most human festival in the world.
For most of the year, the deities of Puri, Lord Jagannath, his brother Balabhadra and their sister Subhadra, stay inside their great temple, where not everyone is allowed to enter.
But once a year, they come out. They are placed on three enormous wooden chariots, the tallest rising over forty feet, each one built fresh from scratch every single year and then never used again.
And then something extraordinary happens. The gods are not carried by priests alone. They are pulled through the streets by ordinary people. Thousands of them, farmers, labourers, strangers, holding thick ropes as thick as a man's arm, dragging the chariots down the Grand Road with their own bare hands.
The idea behind it is simple and beautiful. On this one day, the divine does not wait behind temple walls for you to come to it. It comes out, into the dust and the crowd and the heat, to meet everyone, no matter their caste, their religion, or where they come from.
Before the chariots move, the King of Puri himself comes down from his palace, takes a golden handled broom, and sweeps the path in front of the gods. A king, doing this is to show that before the divine, every single person is equal.
The tradition is over eight hundred years old. It was so overwhelming to the first English travellers who saw it that they took the name Jagannath and turned it into a new English word for an unstoppable force, juggernaut.
Kings have come and gone. Empires have risen and fallen. And still, every year, the ropes are pulled by ordinary hands.
Happy Rath Yatra. May Mahaprabhu Jagannath lead us all through these challenging times. 🙏
Her name was Palak Rajak.
She was 21 years old, from Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh. She was active on social media and had more than 10,000 followers. She regularly posted reels and short videos.
Two days before her death, she posted a reel that investigators are now examining for possible signs of emotional distress.
She married Amit Rajak, an outsourced Air Force employee, on April 14, 2025. Her family says they gave gold, silver, a motorcycle and other items during the wedding.
According to her family, Palak was repeatedly harassed after marriage over alleged demands for a car and a gold chain. They allege she was isolated, denied proper food and subjected to mental and physical abuse.
Her family says she spoke to them several times about the harassment.
On May 12, 2026, Palak called her father in distress. According to her family, she said nobody in the house spoke to her and that she had not eaten properly for three days. She asked to be taken home.
Her father told her that her brother would come the next morning.
A short time later, the family received another call informing them that Palak had allegedly hanged herself.
When her relatives arrived, they claimed they saw injury marks on her neck, legs and other parts of her body. The family then filed a police complaint alleging dowry harassment and murder, and staged a road blockade demanding a fair investigation.
Her husband’s family maintains that she died by suicide.
Police have registered a case against Amit Rajak, his mother and his brother under provisions related to dowry death and harassment under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita.
A postmortem examination has been conducted. Officials say forensic and postmortem findings will guide further action. The investigation is ongoing.
Her family says she was killed.
Her husband’s family says she took her own life.
The evidence and investigation will determine what happened.
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His name is Colonel Prasad Purohit.
He joined the Indian Army in 1994 through the Officers Training Academy in Chennai. He was commissioned into the Maratha Light Infantry. He served in counter insurgency operations in Jammu and Kashmir from 2002 to 2005 before moving to Military Intelligence.
On September 8, 2008, a bomb blast near a mosque in Malegaon, Maharashtra, killed 31 people and injured over 300. Most victims were Muslim pilgrims gathered for Friday prayers during Ramadan.
Two months later, in November 2008, the Maharashtra Anti Terrorism Squad arrested Prasad Purohit. He was accused of masterminding the attack. He was stripped of his uniform and suspended from service.
He maintained throughout his imprisonment that he had infiltrated the organisation in question as part of his official Military Intelligence duties and had been reporting to his superiors.
He spent 2791 days in prison. Nearly nine years. His children grew up without him. They never visited him in jail. His wife Aparna attended court hearings alone for years. A bail petition filed in the Supreme Court in 2011 took seven years to be heard. The Supreme Court finally granted him bail on August 21, 2017.
On July 31, 2025, a Special NIA Court in Mumbai acquitted all seven accused including Purohit. The court recorded that the prosecution had failed to prove the charges beyond reasonable doubt. The allegations regarding procurement and storage of RDX could not be substantiated with credible proof. The NIA itself had stated in 2024 that the Maharashtra ATS had planted RDX to frame the accused.
He was reinstated in the Indian Army. In September 2025, he was promoted to the rank of Colonel with his original seniority restored. The Army has since cleared him for promotion to Brigadier.
His wife Aparna said after the acquittal a jail is a living crematorium. When Prasad was sent to jail, all his identities were stripped from him. The scars of 17 years will remain.
The court acquitted all accused. The Malegaon blast case is closed. The truth of what happened in Malegaon on September 8, 2008, remains officially unresolved.
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Her name is Sonam Raghuvanshi.
On May 11, 2025, she married Raja Raghuvanshi, an Indore businessman. Ten days later, they left for their honeymoon in Shillong.
Raja never came back.
On June 2, his mutilated body was recovered from a deep gorge near Wei Sawdong Falls in Sohra, Meghalaya. He had been hacked to death.
Police filed a 790 page chargesheet alleging Sonam had conspired with her boyfriend Raj Kushwaha to hire three hitmen to kill Raja during their honeymoon. Investigators said she had warned her family before the wedding of serious consequences if the marriage went ahead. She allegedly posted from Raja’s phone after his death and returned to Indore to meet Kushwaha.
She was arrested on June 9, 2025. Charged with murder and destruction of evidence.
She spent 10 months in prison.
Yesterday, a Shillong court granted her bail.
The reason police wrote Section 403 on her arrest intimation document instead of Section 103 under which the FIR was registered.
One wrong section number on one document.
The court ruled this violated her constitutional rights under Article 22 and released her on a personal bond of Rs 50000.
86 of 90 prosecution witnesses are yet to be examined. The trial has barely begun.
Raja Raghuvanshi came home in a body bag from his honeymoon. His alleged killer came home on a paperwork error.
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