September 22, 2025

-

Premium

GENZ REBELLION

A powerful new playbook for changing governments midstream is being executed by young voters in the subcontinent with metronomic regularity, although it is far from democratic. Take 1, Sri Lanka, July 2022. Youth facing severe economic distress formed the Aragalaya (the Struggle) and stormed the citadels of power, including the secretariats of the president and the prime minister, forcing the ruling Rajapaksa family to flee, and an interim government takes their place. Take 2, Bangladesh, August 2024. University students' unions protesting job reservations turned violent after the Dhaka police indiscriminately opened fire against them, resulting in more than 100 casualties. Symbols of power, including the Parliament building, were vandalised, and prime minister Sheikh Hasina had to escape to India in a military aircraft to avoid being lynched by the mob. Take 3, Nepal, September 2025. A controversial social media ban sparks an explosion of countrywide outrage by the nation's Gen Z (those aged between 15 and 25) after their peaceful protests the previous day in capital Kathmandu was met by police firing, killing 19 of their compatriots. The streets turned into battlegrounds, with protesters setting Nepal's Parliament ablaze along with the Rashtrapati Bhawan and the prime minister's residence, as their occupants--President Ramchandra Paudel and Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli--flee to safety.

POLICIES OF DECEPTION

It looked like a routine hit-and-run case: a 20-year-old named Aman found dead on the roadside in western Uttar Pradesh's Amroha district. His Aadhaar card and phone were still in his pocket, and the local police duly recorded the case as an accident. That was back in November 2023. But when the case was reopened earlier this year, what seemed at first like a random road tragedy unravelled into a chilling conspiracy. For, the postmortem itself told a different story--four deep lacerations on Aman's head, with no other injuries--pointing unmistakably to murderBetween July and September 2023, seven insurance policies worth Rs 2.7 crore had been taken out in Aman's name, including a Rs 1 crore accidental death cover. Investigators discovered that his maternal relatives, in cahoots with a local gang, had plotted the killing. This was not their first crime. In 2022, they had murdered another man, Salim, to extract Rs 78 lakh in insurance claims, and were preparing to target a third victim when the police finally intervenedWhat happened to Aman is not an isolated tragedy. It is the face of one of India's biggest insurance rackets--an organised crime network that investigators say has thrived for nearly 15 years and touched nearly every major insurance company. According to the Sambhal police, which first uncovered the nexus, fraudsters issued fake policies in the names of the dying, altered Aadhaar details to make the elderly look decades younger, and forged death certificates for the living. So far, 68 arrests have been made, four murders confirmed and 21 FIRs filed across western UP and DelhiThe victims are nearly always poor, battling illness or disability, many of them and their families barely literate, most of them unaware of what life insurance even means. Among those arrested are at least 50 insurance insiders, including agents and claim investigators, as well as three bank employees, a couple of village functionaries, an ASHA worker and a ward boyPolice say the fraud has already topped Rs 100 crore--but barely one in 10 suspected cases has been physically verified so far. Though the investigations have centred in western UP, the discovery of passbooks and documents from several states--in multiple Indian languages-- indicates a network spanning at least 12 states. Local police now refer to the region--Sambhal and neighbouring districts of Amroha, Bulandshahr, Moradabad, Meerut and Budaun among others--as the "Jamtara of insurance fraud".