Above the Fold: Top stories of the day
1. Indian intelligence agencies are insisting that a Taliban attack on a guesthouse in Kabul, which left 14 dead including 4 Indians, was timed to coincide with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's anniversary in power and that it was aimed at the Indian ambassador to the country. But international news organisations are simply pointing to the popularity of the guesthouse among foreigners in Kabul.
2. Prime Minister Modi, after touring Xi'an and meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, is set to sit down with Premier Li Keqiang in Beijing today to discuss trade ties between the two countries.
3. The Supreme Court has asked the Central Bureau of Investigation to probe its own former chief, Ranjit Sinha, for allegedly "inappropriate" meetings with accused in several scams.

The Big Story: Where are the 39 Indians in Iraq?
The story has mostly receded in the minds of the Indian public, but a look back reminds us of one of the first crises faced by the new government: the abduction of 39 Indians by militants in war-torn Iraq. Yet it is still unclear what has actually happened. The Ministry of External Affairs has all along insisted that they are safe, if not free, but on Thursday Harjit Masih, the "40th" Indian, claimed that they were all killed while he was in Iraq.

Masih said that a few days after the Indian contingent were taken hostage in June, they were all taken to a hilltop and shot from behind. The 25-year-old claims he was hit in the leg, and pretended to be death, which allowed him to escape later. External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said she doesn't buy his story, claiming she has eight sources that have confirmed that the 39 Indians are still alive.

But that wasn't all that Masih has alleged. Speaking at the house of Aam Aadmi Party leader Bhagwant Mann, Masih claimed that he has been kept in custody by Indian agencies over the last year and was only let go a fortnight ago. The already murky story, which has had far too many plotlines from the very beginning, has just gotten murkier.

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Politicking & Policying
1. The Supreme Court has stayed a circular from the Delhi government calling on its officers to report cases of criminal defamation, since the court also happens to be hearing a case challenging the validity of criminal defamation featuring a petition by Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal.
2. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley is unhappy. And an unhappy Jaitley, means barbs at the very house that allows him to be in Parliament. Defending his party's use of money bills that don't have to be passed in the Rajya Sabha, Jaitley asked whether the "indirectly elected" house can keep questioning the wisdom of the directly elected one.
3. A sizeable jump in the amount of gold being smuggled into the country is turning to a problem for authorities, not just to stop the smuggling but to figure out what to do with the seized gold.
4. The government has been dragging its feet on a promise to prosecute corrupt bureaucrats, missing the Supreme Court's deadline of three months to decide on giving sanction for up to 92 cases of alleged corruption.

Giggle


Punditry
1. The real significance of the fascination over Salman Khan's criminal case is sacrifice, writes Alok Rai in the Indian Express, giving up something we value to appease the gods.
2. A leader in the Business Standard points out that, while the macroeconomic outlook is still positive, there are signs of pressure on India's Current Account Deficit again.
3. It is the bureaucracy, not the political executive, that is in the driving seat of India's foreign policy, writes Uttara Sahsrabuddhe in Mint.

Don't Miss
S. Anand writes about a book that was published 79 years ago on this day: The Annihilation of Caste.  
It is not surprising that Ambedkar’s posthumous publications easily outstrip the works he could manage to publish in his own lifetime. Among these are Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Ancient India, Philosophy of Hinduism, and Riddles in Hinduism. When the last-mentioned work was published, the Shiv Sena protested and the Maharashtra government banned the work in 1988.

In all subsequent editions of Volume 4 of the Babasaheb Ambedkar: Writings and Speeches series, the Maharashtra government, which claims proprietorial rights over all of Ambedkar’s works, carries this caveat: “Government does not concur with the views expressed in the chapter.”