Indian police have arrested two people including a senior executive at Royal Challengers Bengaluru, reports said Friday, after 11 fans were crushed to death during celebrations for the team’s maiden IPL title.Hundreds of thousands packed the streets in the southern city of Bengaluru on Wednesday to welcome home their hero Virat Kohli and his RCB team after they beat Punjab Kings in the final of the Indian Premier League.But the euphoria of the vast crowds ended in disaster when 11 mainly young fans died in a stampede near M. Chinnaswamy Stadium, where the players were parading the trophy.Media outlet India Today said that Nikhil Sosale, RCB’s head of marketing, was arrested at Bengaluru’s airport.The Indian Express newspaper reported Sosale was arrested along with an executive from an event management company.The deaths at what should have been a celebration have sparked widespread anger and top police officers including the city’s police commissioner have been suspended.The reported arrests came hours after Karnataka state’s Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said that “legal action has been taken against the representatives of RCB”, as well as the event organisers, and the state’s cricket association.Siddaramaiah said a first information report, which marks the start of a police investigation, had been “registered against them”. Local media reported that the charges include culpable homicide, not amounting to murder, among others.There was no immediate comment from RCB.- ‘Made to pay’ -Siddaramaiah, who only uses one name, also pointed the finger at some senior police.”These officers appear to be irresponsible and negligent and it has been decided to suspend them,” Siddaramaiah said.The dead were mostly aged between 14 and 29 and were among a sea of people who had poured onto the streets to catch a glimpse of their heroes.RCB offered financial aid of $11,655 to each family of the victims, calling the deaths “unfortunate”.Indian media have widely reported the team earned $2.3 million in prize money alone for taking the title on Wednesday.Kohli, who top-scored in the final, said he was “at a loss for words” after celebrations of a dream first IPL crown turned to tragedy. Prime Minister Narendra Modi called the accident “absolutely heartrending”. Siddaramaiah has said that the stadium had a capacity of 35,000 people “but 200,000-300,000 people came”.Deadly crowd incidents are a frequent occurrence at Indian mass events such as religious festivals due to poor crowd management and safety lapses.”The grim truth is that the fan, who drives the commerce of every sport, is the last priority for administrators,” The Hindu newspaper wrote in its editorial on Friday. “Asphyxia was the primary cause of death besides injuries suffered in the stifling rush,” it added. The pioneering IPL sold its broadcast rights in 2022 for five seasons to global media giants for an eye-popping $6.2 billion, putting it up amongst the highest-ranked sport leagues in cost-per-match terms.”The world’s richest cricket tournament can’t cut corners when it comes to fans’ safety,” the Indian Express newspaper wrote in an editorial. “A fitting tribute to those dead, therefore, is not mere signing a cheque but holding those in charge responsible — ensuring that heads roll, and those who dropped the ball Wednesday are made to pay.”

Since trading the battlefield for Afghanistan’s halls of power, some Taliban members have also swapped their weapons for pens to tell their version of the 20-year conflict with Western forces, who they accuse of distorting “reality”.A flood of books has been written, mostly from a Western perspective, about the war between the US-led forces that invaded Afghanistan in the wake of the September 11 attacks until the Taliban’s return to power in 2021. But in the years since, a proliferation of writings by Taliban figures — praising their exploits and the achievements of the “Islamic Emirate” — is now the reigning narrative in Afghanistan.”No matter what foreigners have written… they have largely ignored the reality of what happened to us and why we were forced to fight,” author Khalid Zadran told AFP. A member of the Haqqani network — long viewed as one of the most dangerous militant factions in Afghanistan — he now serves as the spokesman for the capital’s police force.In his 600-page tome in Pashto published in April, he recounts US incursions in his home province of Khost, his childhood steeped in stories of soldiers’ “atrocities”, and his desire to join the Taliban in the name of his country’s “freedom”.”I witnessed horrific stories every day — mangled bodies on the roadside,” he writes in “15 Minutes”, a title inspired by a US drone strike he narrowly escaped. Muhajer Farahi, now a deputy information and culture minister, penned his “Memories of Jihad: 20 Years in Occupation” to “state the facts”, he said.”America, contrary to its claims, has committed cruel and barbaric acts, destroyed our country with bombs, destroyed infrastructure, and has sown discord and cynicism between nations and tribes,” he told AFP from his office in central Kabul.Little attention is paid in either book to the thousands of civilians killed in Taliban attacks — many of them suicide bombings that entrenched fear across the country for nearly two decades.Farahi insists the Taliban “were cautious in saving civilians and innocent” lives, while criticising fellow Afghans who collaborated with the pro-Western police as a “stain” on the country.Rights groups accuse the current Taliban authorities of widespread abuses — particularly against women and girls, who the United Nations say are victims of what amounts to “gender apartheid”.In his book published in 2023, Farahi claims the Taliban attempted to negotiate — in vain, he insists — with the United States over the fate of Osama bin Laden, whose capture or death Washington demanded after his plane hijackers killed around 3,000 people in the September 11, 2001 attacks.Bin Laden, the leader of Al-Qaeda, who had been based in Afghanistan, was killed by US forces in Pakistan in 2011.- American ‘bloodthirsty dragon’ -“It was clear… that the Americans had already planned the occupation of Afghanistan,” writes Farahi in the English version of his book, which has been translated into five languages.In the wake of the September 11 attacks, Afghans thought it would “have nothing to do with our country”, he continues, but soon realised that Afghanistan would face “punishment”.For 20 years, the war pitted Taliban militants against a US-led coalition of 38 countries supporting the Afghan Republic and its forces. Tens of thousands of Afghans died in the fighting and in Taliban attacks, as did nearly 6,000 foreign soldiers, including 2,400 Americans.For Farahi, the war reflects the West’s desire to “impose its culture and ideology on other nations”.His disjointed journal mixes battlefield memories with polemical chapters railing against the American “bloodthirsty dragon”.The book “reveals the truths that were not told before because the media, especially the Western media, presented a different picture of the war”, he said.According to him, the “mujahideen”, or holy warriors, despite being far less equipped, were able to rely on their unity and God’s aid to achieve victory.- New front -Only a few of the new wave of Taliban books have been autobiographies, which appeal to an audience seeking to understand the war “from the inside”, according to Zadran.His book, initially 2,000 copies in Pashto, sold out quickly and another 1,000 are in the works — along with a Dari-language version, he said.Many chapters mention Bowe Bergdahl, the US soldier held hostage for five years by the Haqqani network. He recounts treks through the mountains along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border to move him between hideouts, efforts to convert him to Islam and conversations about his girlfriend back in the United States.Both accounts end in 2021, before the transformation of the fighters who moved from remote mountain hideouts to the carpeted offices of the capital.There, their battle has turned diplomatic: the Taliban are now fighting for international recognition of their government.”The war is over now,” Farahi said, “and we want good relations with everyone” — even with the “bloodthirsty dragon”.