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  • Congress spokesperson Reetam Singh has claimed that Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) co-convenor Ashutosh Ranka refused to meet Congress leaders during his recent Assam visit. He alleged that the group was told to stay away because its outreach was "an Aam Aadmi Party initiative"
  • Indian Railways is undertaking a major expansion of the Guwahati rail network, including new lines, the second Saraighat Bridge, station redevelopment and a Mega Coaching Complex. The projects are intended to improve connectivity, passenger facilities and train operations across the Northeast
  • 150 people were arrested in Delhi as the CJP protest over the resignation of CEC Gynaesh Kumar entered the second day
  • The Centre ordered all AGMUT cadre segments to report within 48 hours any FIR, arrest, adverse court order or investigative action involving IAS, IPS, DANICS and DANIPS officers. The move follows concerns over delays in reporting investigations by agencies including the CBI, ED and anti-corruption bodies
  • India brought back alleged international narco-trafficking kingpin Navpreet Singh from Türkiye, where he had allegedly obtained citizenship under the false identity Navab Virk. Home Minister Amit Shah said Singh was accused of running heroin and methamphetamine trafficking routes from Afghanistan into India
  • Jack Dorsey’s decentralised messaging application Bitchat disappeared from Apple's and Google's app stores in India after Apple said the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology had ordered its removal under Section 69A of the IT Act. The app's website was also inaccessible through several Indian internet providers
  • The RBI reiterated its cautious stance on private cryptocurrencies, while backing the underlying technologies such as distributed ledgers and tokenisation. Governor Sanjay Malhotra said central-bank digital currencies could offer an alternative for improving cross-border payments
  • Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said India must continue building economic resilience amid global uncertainty, highlighting strategic-resource security, diversified supply chains, skills and domestic capabilities in critical minerals, rare earths, semiconductors and small modular reactors. She was speaking at the Kautilya Economic Conclave in New Delhi
  • RBI Governor Sanjay Malhotra warned that a slowdown in the global AI investment cycle could trigger sharp repricing of financial assets, while saying any correction in elevated AI valuations in advanced economies could potentially redirect capital towards India. He also identified cyber risk as a major financial-stability concern arising from increasingly sophisticated AI
  • India lost 4-0 to Brazil in the historic international friendly at Kolkata’s Salt Lake Stadium, with Estevao, Pedro and Samuel Lino, who scored twice, finding the net. The match was Brazil’s first senior men’s international on Indian soil
  • Seventeen-year-old Kumkum Mohod won India’s first women’s individual recurve gold at the Asian Games, beating South Korea’s Oh Yejin in a shoot-off. The victory also secured an Olympic quota place for India for the 2028 Los Angeles Games
  • Pranavi Urs became the first Indian woman to win an individual Asian Games golf gold, finishing one stroke ahead of China’s Yin Ruoning at 15-under 265. India also took silver in the women’s team event
  • Wrestler Aman Sehrawat won the men’s 57kg freestyle gold, defeating reigning world champion Han Chong Song of North Korea 11-7 after recovering from a 7-6 deficit late in the bout
  • India’s men’s hockey team retained the Asian Games gold, defeating Malaysia 5-1 in the final. The victory also secured India a place in the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics
  • India retained the Asian Games men’s T20 cricket title, beating Pakistan by 19 runs in the final. Abhishek Sharma’s 61 off 28 balls and Tilak Varma’s unbeaten 51 off 22 helped India post 211/6 before Pakistan finished on 192/6
Asian Games: October 3 gold medallists: Kumkum Mohod (Archery), Pranavi Urs (Golf), Aman Sehrawat (Wrestling), India men’s cricket team (Cricket), and India men’s hockey team (Hockey) /////// India finishes its campaign in 4th position in the Asian Games medal table: 21 gold, 27 silver, 37 bronze; 85 medals.
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The Freelancer: The Build-Up And Mohit Raina Make It Worth A Watch

By Sunil Garodia
First publised on 2023-09-04 14:33:23

About the Author

Sunil Garodia Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator. Author of Cyber Scams in India, Digital Arrest, The Money Trap and The Human Hack

Neeraj Pandey has a solid body of work after he made his directorial debut with the amazing A Wednesday that immediately propelled him into the limelight. Special 26, Baby and M.S.Dhoni: The Untold Story kept the magic alive before he gave a flop in Aiyyary. On TV, he directed the riveting Special Ops where again he was in solid form. The Freelancer (streaming on Disney+Hotstar), his latest offering, is based on the book A Ticket To Syria: A Story About the ISIS In Maldives by Shirish Thorat and the writers of the series, Ritesh Shah and Pandey, have changed the location to India to make it relevant for viewers in the country.

The story is about how a globe-trotting ("5 book ka passport hai mera", she boasts) mohallah badi bi, Farhat Khala (Balaji Gauri)  who goes around like a preacher manages to radicalize educated and wealthy Muslim families (and it is here that the writers falter by not making the radicalization process convincing - it is almost childish) to adopt the 'true' way of Islam and join the ISIS in Syria. But when she sends one such family from Malaysia, she forgets that their son has recently married Aliya (Kashmira Pardeshi),the daughter of Mumbai ex-cop Inayat Khan (Sushant Singh), who will go to any length to establish contact with her daughter who goes missing in Istanbul with her husband's family just days after her marriage. When Inayat fails to contact his ex-colleague and now top mercenary Avinash (Mohit Raina), he gets himself sprayed by bullets by the police in front of the US Consulate in Mumbai to make international headlines and grab Avinash's attention. Sure enough, Avinash turns up although he is troubled by his wife's illness (she is in a sanitarium for her depression after she accidently kills their only son while backing her car) and is duty-bound to help Inayat's widow and her daughter.

But it is not a simple mission. For, although ISIS is a declining force, it is almost impossible to extract someone from their strongholds in Syria. He seeks the help of security expert Dr Khan (Anupam Kher) and the CIA. The radicalized family, in the meantime, along with Aliya, is ensconced in a safe house in ISIS stronghold where there are stringent restrictions and brutal punishment for deviating. Their mobile phones and laptops are confiscated. The ISIS has interest in the third son, Sameer, who is a US-trained pilot. Aliya somehow retains one of her phones and messages her dad (not knowing he is dead) and her mother replies to her informing that uncle Avinash will rescue her. She sends pictures and location and also downloads a virus in her husband's laptop as directed by Avinash. The CIA plays a hard game with Avinash who knows he cannot do it without their help. Simultaneously he explores other options like contacting a oil smuggler to explore the possibility of bringing back Aliya on one of his trips back and a Gujarati restaurant owner in Morocco who has business interests with the ISIS to find out if he can enter their stronghold. The first part of the series (4 episodes) ends with the planning and the second part promises to be a fitting finale.

Mohit Raina is excellent as the former Mumbai cop who has gone international. He has the build for the part and executes the limited action scenes (more are promised later when he will do the actual extraction) expertly. The others in the cast are adequate but Balaji Gauri as Farhat Khala is menacing. The Freelancer is definitely worth a watch.

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