Amazon.com Inc. is investing an additional $5 billion in Anthropic PBC, and may inject $20 billion more over time, a deal that deepens the companies’ ties in an increasingly competitive AI industry.
Anthropic makes the Claude AI chatbot and coding tool. (Bloomberg)
Anthropic, which makes the Claude chatbot and coding tool, plans to spend more than $100 billion over the next 10 years on Amazon’s cloud technologies and chips, the companies said in a statement on Monday.
Amazon was already one of Anthropic’s biggest backers, with prior investments totalling $8 billion. For Amazon, the partnership has given its cloud business a leading AI model and a major customer for its home-built Trainium line of AI chips. Anthropic, meanwhile, has had access to Amazon’s roster of corporate clients. More than 100,000 customers run Claude models on Amazon Web Services, the companies said.
Anthropic, founded in 2021 by several former employees of OpenAI, is widely expected to conduct an initial public offering as soon as this year. The AI company has been racing to persuade more businesses to pay for its software to help offset the immense cost of developing the technology. Anthropic clinched a $30 billion funding round in February that valued the San Francisco-based startup at $380 billion, and has since drawn investor offers at a valuation of over $800 billion.
The agreement is the latest sign of Anthropic’s hunger for the immense processing power necessary to build new versions of Claude. Like OpenAI, Anthropic has inked a series of deals to secure the necessary chips and rented computing power. Anthropic last week said it would enlist Broadcom Inc. to supply chips based on Google’s tensor processing units, a rival to Amazon’s Trainium line. The collaboration among the three companies will let Anthropic access about 3.5 GW worth of computing power. Anthropic in October confirmed it would grab as many as 1 million of the specialised AI chips from the Alphabet Inc. unit, a tie-up worth tens of billions of dollars.
In Monday’s announcement, Amazon said it would provide Anthropic with chips—both for general computing and AI accelerators—to reach about 5 GW of power.
Though Anthropic has been on a winning streak this year with popular products including its Claude Code AI tool, it’s also locked in a dispute with the US government over AI safeguards—a fight that has led to legal action from Anthropic and that the company has said threatens its business.
Amazon said it remains a minority investor, and is not represented on Anthropic’s board or trust. The size of the future investments are tied to “certain commercial milestones,” Amazon said.
The makers of Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi Season 2 have dropped a new promo, and it has already stirred excitement and speculation among fans. The latest glimpse hints at a major twist that could significantly alter the storyline, bringing back memories from one of the show’s most dramatic arcs.
Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi brings a new twist
In the promo, Tulsi is seen revisiting a haunting moment from her past when she killed her own son, Ansh Gujral. The emotional recall sets a tense tone, reminding viewers of the intense conflicts that once defined the Virani family. As she reflects on this painful chapter, the scene takes a mysterious turn when someone unexpectedly arrives at her doorstep, leaving her visibly shocked.
SÃO PAULO—A Brazilian gang founded in the country’s violent prisons is fast becoming one of the world’s biggest criminal organizations, reshaping global cocaine flows from South America to Europe’s busiest ports and edging into the U.S.
The PCC has flourished even with its longtime leader, Marcos Willians Herbas Camacho, behind bars.
Long under Washington’s radar, the First Capital Command, known by its Portuguese initials PCC, started out as a disgruntled band of inmates fighting for soap and toilet paper in the 1990s.
It now has some 40,000 members behind bars and on the streets with a vast network of affiliates—making it the largest criminal group in the Americas by some estimates, operating in nearly 30 countries on every continent except Antarctica.
“The PCC has become a truly transnational group,” said Lincoln Gakiya, Brazil’s top PCC prosecutor, who has tracked its rise for two decades. “I believe it is now the fastest-growing criminal organization in the world.”
With the scale of Italian organized criminal groups and the efficiency of a multinational corporation, the PCC has helped drive record cocaine seizures in Europe and sparked violent turf wars in the heart of major ports in Belgium and the Netherlands.
Prosecutors and police in Brazil are calling on President Trump to label the PCC a Foreign Terrorist Organization, joining more than a dozen other Latin criminal networks.
The PCC is organized crime at its most organized, prosecutors say.
Unlike the narco-tycoons of Mexico, the heavily armed Colombian cocaine militias or the flashy drug lords of Rio de Janeiro’s Red Command gang, PCC members keep a low, businesslike profile, seeking fortune not fame—and shying away from the kinds of gratuitous violence that attract police and TV news crews. New recruits sign up to a strict internal code of conduct, their swearing-in ceremonies sometimes conducted by videoconference.
By adopting religious personas—pretending to be ministers—PCC figures have gone into far-flung regions of Brazil to gain the trust of locals and recruit new members, while securing routes to neighboring cocaine-producing countries.
Many evangelicals here embrace the so-called prosperity gospel—the belief that wealth signals divine favor—helping the gang make inroads in poor communities. In 2023, prosecutors in Brazil’s northern state of Rio Grande do Norte investigated a PCC cell accused of setting up at least seven churches to launder drug money—a practice now so common that authorities have a name for it: narco-Pentecostalism.
Drug profits are also laundered through gas stations, fintechs, real-estate funds, sex motels, car dealerships and construction firms, police say. São Paulo authorities launched an operation against a Chinese-run criminal group in February that investigators say worked with PCC associates to launder more than $200 million through the sale of electronics.
Brazilian law-enforcement authorities target a money-laundering network in São Paulo last year allegedly connected to the PCC.
Few crimes are outside the PCC’s reach. Members today are involved in everything from illegal gold mining and cargo theft to cybercrimes and the trafficking of exotic birds, according to dozens of interviews with state security officials.
Coming to America
Cocaine, though, remains the PCC’s core business and that means that the gang has also become America’s problem.
In an organization chart that São Paulo authorities have built there’s now a new category—“North American division.”
The U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned the PCC in 2021 and in 2024 froze the U.S. assets of Diego Gonçalves do Carmo, who laundered some $240 million for the PCC and continues to help run financial operations despite having been jailed in Brazil.
U.S. authorities have since identified individuals affiliated with the PCC in Florida, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Tennessee. In Massachusetts, the U.S. Attorney’s Office last year announced charges against 18 Brazilians prosecutors say were linked to the PCC for trafficking handguns, rifles and shotguns—and, in one case, fentanyl.
“The PCC has forged a bloody path to dominance,” the Treasury Department said in a statement at the time of sanctions against Gonçalves do Carmo, calling it “one of the most significant narcotics trafficking organizations” in Latin America.
Born in captivity
When the PCC was born in August 1993 inside the grimy walls of the Taubaté high-security prison in São Paulo state, its founders weren’t seeking world domination.
They demanded better sanitation and beds, among other basics. Brazil’s prisons were slum-like infernos—some of the world’s most overcrowded and violent, plagued by tuberculosis and lice—and rights groups said guards routinely beat inmates. Resentment was simmering at Taubaté after 111 inmates had months earlier been killed when police crushed a rebellion at another prison not far away.
Eight prisoners formed a pact of loyalty at Taubaté, vowing to protect each other against the guards.
What then followed was one of the biggest policy mistakes in Latin American law enforcement history.
Alarmed by the growing jailhouse fraternity, authorities tightened prison controls and transferred inmates to other states. This only accelerated the PCC’s national expansion and hardened its resolve. “Peace, justice and freedom” became the PCC’s rallying call, as it cast itself as a parallel power to a state whose abuses—from prison officials to politicians—help the gang draw recruits.
Over the next three decades, the transferred inmates set up new PCC cells in prisons across the country and tightened their grip behind bars, both in Paraguay and Brazil, where thousands of active members remain in jail. The PCC assigns cells, distributes contraband and even produces its own prison rum, “Crazy Maria.”
The state has been unable to bring PCC inmates under control. The country’s chronically overcrowded and understaffed prisons struggle to enforce even basic rules such as bans on cellphones, enabling gang leaders to keep running criminal operations from their cells.
‘Tie brigade’
Inmates are recruited in exchange for legal help from its army of lawyers, known as “the tie brigade.” Those PCC members who disobey rules are punished through internal jailhouse trials, which can end in torture or execution, authorities say.
An inmate uses a shield with the initials PCC to protect himself after an uprising broke out at Alcaçuz prison in Natal, Rio Grande do Norte state, Brazil, in 2017.
But the gang’s biggest expansion has been outside the prison walls—as the group set its sights on securing cocaine from the world’s three main producers—Colombia, Peru and Bolivia—at wholesale prices.
That has brought the PCC to the world’s biggest rainforest, the Amazon.
The PCC is a household name in villages like Urucurituba, 1,600 miles north of São Paulo’s squalid jails, where the vast milky Madeira River cuts through the rainforest.
Like many riverside communities, Urucurituba doesn’t have a resident doctor or even police officer. But it does now have its own drug dealer—several of them.
“We’re in the hands of the traffickers now,” said Jeffesson Ribeiro, who runs a small hotel by the pier, where drug gangs have started a soccer team to recruit young men.
Parallel justice system
With no police presence, the traffickers operate a parallel justice system in the village of some 500 families—punishing petty thieves and meting out brutal justice as they see fit, residents said.
“They used to do things in hiding, now they fear no one,” said a worker at one of the village’s makeshift restaurants. During the night, locals sometimes hear the screams of those being tortured by the gang members, he said.
The gang’s expansion cut out the middlemen who used to smuggle the drug into Brazil from largely remote and unchecked borders.
PCC figures have battled for control of the Amazon rainforest—whose waterways connect with cocaine-producing countries—with the help of corrupt local authorities and by going so far as to pose as evangelical pastors spreading the word of God, said Marcus Vinícius Almeida, who just stepped down as public security secretary for Amazonas state.
Though churches oppose organized crime and offer themselves as a path out of gangs, the PCC offers recruits a future in a system “made for the poor by the poor,” said Bruno Manso, a foremost authority on the gang and co-author of “The War: The Rise of the PCC and the World of Crime in Brazil.” Manso said the PCC provides what recruits feel they can’t get elsewhere: escape from “the utter misery of urban life.”
The PCC’s move north hasn’t been easy. It cost it its longstanding truce with Rio’s Red Command gang and its local allies, setting off bloody turf battles across the forest from 2016 to today. To buttress its forces, the PCC has had to recruit renegade guerrillas who didn’t participate in a 2016 peace accord in Colombia, according to state prosecutors, gaining seasoned fighters and bomb makers as well as access to military-grade weapons.
The efforts have paid off handsomely. Authorities estimate the PCC moves several tons each month though the Amazon, with many small cities and towns in the world’s largest rainforest now under the group’s control.
Trucks, river barges, light aircraft and helicopters carry cocaine through the dense jungle to the Atlantic coast, where it is smuggled aboard containerships to transit points in West Africa en route to growing markets in Europe, authorities say.
Antwerp, Rotterdam and Hamburg are among the top destinations, where violence has spilled into the streets as the PCC’s local partners and others battle to carve up the cocaine trade. Grenade attacks, shootings, murders, torture and kidnappings have been documented by port police.
Belgian customs officers search for drugs in a container at Antwerp’s port.
Like other large organized crime groups in Latin America, the PCC’s interest doesn’t just lie in drugs. In addition to mining gold, its members have branched into timber extraction, human trafficking, illegal fishing and poaching, and even the enslavement of some indigenous communities, said Almeida.
Europe, though, is the region where the PCC has found its most lucrative business opportunities.
Cocaine seizures in the European Union have now hit record highs for seven straight years, with the most recent figures showing 419 tons seized across member states in 2023, led by major entry hubs such as Belgium, Spain and the Netherlands.
Much of that has sailed out of the Port of Santos just southeast of São Paulo, Latin America’s biggest container port.
Santos hosts the largest port complex in Latin America and one of the largest in the world.
Divers and welders have been arrested in recent years for hiding cocaine in the hulls of ships bound for Europe and Africa, in some cases packing as much as half a ton of the drug into underwater recessed chambers in the dead of night.
Today, the PCC operates more like a marketplace or regulatory agency rather than a traditional organization—while eschewing a hierarchical structure like some cocaine gangs. “It became the government of the illegal world,” said Manso, the author who has written extensively on the PCC.
No member is above the rules in a gang that lives by the importance of “equality” and “union,” but anyone can prosper as long as they remain loyal, said Manso. Free-market capitalism is a mantra.
“If you want to sell drugs to the Netherlands and you have capacity to do so, then you can,” he said. “If you want to launder money through a gas station, go for it…it’s a ‘government’ with a liberal mindset that allows everyone to earn money.”
That horizontal structure allows the PCC to expand rapidly without territorial control. In recent years it has repurposed port terminals and other logistical infrastructure and forged partnerships with Italy’s ’Ndrangheta, Japan’s Yakuza and Albanian and Serbian gangs in West Africa. Gakiya, the prosecutor, calls the alliances “criminal convergence.”
Without the top-down hierarchy of other drug-trafficking groups, the PCC is harder to decapitate—so much so that it has flourished even though its longtime leader, Marcos Willians Herbas Camacho, known as Marcola, has been in jail since 1999.
A former street thief who became an avid reader of Dante, Marcola has ordered killings and helped orchestrate the PCC’s transnational expansion, even marrying and fathering children behind bars. Yet, investigators say the group now doesn’t depend on any single leader.
Officials no longer talk about eliminating the PCC but managing its uneasy coexistence with the state—often leaving investigators frustrated or stunned by the links between gangsters and the state itself.
Police in February arrested the operator of a multimillion-dollar fintech that authorities believe financed electoral campaigns in the 2024 municipal elections to secure garbage-collection contracts, bus concessions and fuel-supply deals.
Colonel Pedro Lopes, head of intelligence for São Paulo’s military police at the time of the vote, said the PCC’s infiltration of politics across Brazil’s wealthiest state had taken even the most experienced investigators by surprise.
While most actors would avoid such a role in fear of judgment, Kritika Kamra says she is unfazed by how her character in the Vijay Varma-starrer Matka King will be perceived. Set in the smoky underbelly of 1960s Bombay, she plays a woman who enters a morally complex relationship with a married man, fully aware of what it entails. It’s the kind of role cinema has historically flattened into labels — the other woman — the one you’re meant to dislike.
“I know that the character is going to be judged. And I’m welcoming that judgment,” she says plainly. “I’m not interested in making a character likeable. That’s not my goal.” For Kamra, the job isn’t to soften a character but to understand her without apology. “Infidelity and jealousy are very human. Relationships are messy. They are not black and white. If we start making moral statements through stories, then we’re simplifying something that isn’t simple.”
Tamil Nadu is one of the richest states in India by any measure, be it in terms of GDP or per capita income. It is one of the most endowed when it comes to history, royal power, cultural artefacts and literature. For the rest of India, especially in the areas above the Vindhyas, people living south of the mountain range were called ‘Madrasi’. It was not entirely without foundation, for the English East India Company and later the English government created the Madras Presidency, which covered an area of over 362,000 square kilometers and a population of over 30 million between 1870 and 1920. The territories that the British administered from Fort St. George as the Madras Presidency were historically opposed to each other, linguistically distinct, and also geographically distinct. Ranging from the southern districts of Odisha (Ganjam, Gajapati, Malkangir and others) to Andhra Pradesh, Lakshadweep, large parts of Karnataka and present-day Telangana to most of Tamil Nadu, what was called the Madras Presidency included the fertile delta as well as the Nilgiris, where tea and coffee plantations were developed. The presidency ended British colonial rule which ended in 1947. It was only after the death of Potti Sriramulu demanding a separate state of Andhra Pradesh that this artificial administrative structure finally broke down and the present state of Tamil Nadu came into existence.
The ancient region of Tamilakam has been constantly changing both politically and regionally. (Image courtesy of Incredible India)
ancient tamilakam
Archaeological excavations at Attirampakkan near Chennai (formerly Madras) have revealed evidence of hominids through the presence of stone axes and other tools, which were probably used more than 170,000 years ago. In fact, Chennai itself has provided similar dates for tools on typo-technical grounds, these cores excavated at Kalapakkam (fist-sized stone tools with pointed and pointed ends) indicate continuous human presence since the Middle Palaeolithic period.
During the last 3,000 years, which includes the Sangam (2nd BC–4th AD) and post-Sangam periods, there have been three major monarchical dynasties that ruled roughly the same area that is today recognized as Tamil Nadu. Therefore, Tamilakam came before the Madras Presidency. It was an extensive region ruled by the Cholas, Pandyas and Cheras and included present-day Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Puducherry and southern parts of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. The most definitive source of the presence of these three dynasties comes from the key inscription of the Maurya emperor Ashoka at Girnar in Gujarat. In that inscription, Ashoka (reign: 304–232 BCE) refers to the kingdoms that existed on the borders of his dominions, among these he lists the Cholas, the Pandyas and the Keralaputras, as well as the kingdoms of Greek Antiochus in the north-west and Tamraparni in the east.
In Sangam literary texts these regions appear as a single cultural area where Tamil, despite being the main language, was by no means the only language. Malayalam and Kannada also emerged from this region and period. The ancient region of Tamilakam has been constantly changing politically and regionally, however, apart from cultural continuity, trade has also remained stable. The Greek Periplus of the Erythraean Sea (1st CE) and Marco Polo’s account (11th CE) both attest to the presence of international trade in Tamil Nadu. Pearls, pepper, ivory and other goods were the mainstay of this international trade. When the second millennium BC When the Portuguese, Dutch, English and French came in the latter half of the century, the textile trade took place on the west coast while the spice trade took place on the east coast. Tamil Nadu and its regions like Pondicherry benefited from both.
Kalabhar and Malik Kafur: Winners of Tamilakam
The triumvirate of the Early Cholas, Early Pallavas and Cheras, who had maintained rivalry among each other, faced a sudden and powerful enemy between the 3rd and 6th centuries. Scholars have been unable to accurately identify the Kalabhras, their region of origin, the period of their rule or even the territory they conquered after defeating the ancient Trimurti.
SC Mishra and Manisha Agnihotri, in “Viewing the Kalabhras as a hoax or a historical reality”, write, “…we find contradictory views about the historical reality of the Kalabhras. Some regard them as dreaded rulers creating panic among the southern powers by their invasions, while some consider them hunters, yet others have set a stage for them in Tamilakam as the “Kalabhra Interregnum”. They are described as a widespread tribe. Also believed to have led to political and social unrest, their inclination towards heterodox beliefs (Jainism and Buddhism).
But from the inscriptional evidence found at Pulankurichi (dated 270 CE) and the Velvikudi copper plate inscription of the 8th century, it is clear that this dynasty existed. Mishra and Agnihotri write about the inscription, “…a king named Kalabhran is said to have taken possession of the vast earth by driving out innumerable great kings (Adhirajas) and reestablished the above (mentioned village). This inscription provides a genealogy of the Pandu rulers starting from Pandu, who led to the birth of Buddha, Pururava, Maravarman, Randhira, Sri Kadungan, Mana Chendan, Arikesari, Chedaiyan, and then Nedumajadaiyan are credited with defeating Kadava, Kurumba and are said to be the kings of Neriyar (i.e. Chola). The Kalabhras were eventually destroyed and completely wiped out from history by the Trimurti probably because of their anti-Brahmin inclinations.
Imperial Chola and conquest of Kalinga and Bengal
The greatest dynasty to rule Tamil Nadu was the Later Cholas whose founder was Vijayalaya who took advantage of the feud between the Pandya and Pallava kingdoms and captured Tanjore (Thanjavur) in 850 AD and revived the Chola dynasty. A series of kings waged war with the Rashtrakutas, Eastern and Western Chalukyas, and by the 11th century the Cholas emerged as the dominant power under King Chola I (947–1014 CE). Raja Raja brought Maldives, Sri Lanka and all other neighboring kingdoms under Chola control. After the conquest of Kalinga and Bengal, Rajendra Chola I shifted the Chola capital from Thanjavur to a new city. Nilakantha Sastri writes in The Cholas, “Gangaikonda-Cholapuram, at the meeting point of the modern districts of Trichinopoly, Arcot and Tanjore, rose to prominence as the Chola capital in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and is now a small place with a grand temple in ruins”.
However, a few decades after his demise the Chola empire came close to collapse due to Chalukya interference and palace intrigues. However, it was Kulottanga I, born into an amiable Chalukya family, who became king and restored Cola power and extended diplomatic relations not only throughout India but also to China. Shastri writes, “The Chola empire under Kulottunga maintained extensive foreign relations in and out of India. An incomplete Gahadavala prashasti engraved on the temple walls of Gangaikonda-Cholapuram shows that Chola diplomacy in this period included the kingdoms of northern India within the limits of its orbit. This prashasti, which begins with Akuntakotakantha, must be that of Madanapala or his son Govindachandra of Kanauj. The inscription opens by citing the 41st regnal year of Kulottunga, but stops short of naming the actual ruler who made the record or giving the occasion for it. This inscription is probably evidence of some dynastic connection between these two dynasties.
By the middle of the 13th century the Pandyas regained control of the Tamil heartland.
However, a new power had emerged in Delhi in the north. Sultan Alauddin Khilji (1296-1316 AD) sent his army under the command of Malik Kafur, a eunuch slave of Hindu descent and one of Khilji’s most trusted generals. His conquest of Ma’bar or medieval Tamil Nadu is well described by B.R.Modak in Sayana, “In this period King Maravarman Kukasekhara of the Pandya dynasty died at Madura and a feud broke out between his two sons Veera Pandya and Sundara Pandya. The latter sought the help of Alauddin Khilji. Alauddin instructed Malik Kafur to help Sundara Pandya. Accordingly Malik Kafur started with a large army and defeated Veera Pandya, taking the side of Sundar Pandya… and plundered cities on his way and returned to Delhi with 312 elephants, twenty thousand horses and a huge treasure of gold and jewels.
Author Valay Singh’s Historicity is a news column about a city based on its documented history, mythology and archaeological excavations. The views expressed are personal.
Under the new doctrine, any major terrorist attack is now treated as a strategic trigger that demands a multi-pronged, sustained response, not just a single attack.
Apart from the SIN and IWT suspension, India has launched a series of sustained counter-terrorism operations. (Image: PTI/File)
On April 22, 2026, India marks one year of the Pahalgam terror attack, an attack that shattered the idea of relative peace in the tourist region of Kashmir. The attack, in which 26 civilians were killed, was not just another addition to the long list of terror incidents in Jammu and Kashmir, it became a turning point. A year later, the attack has become the decisive trigger for a tough, multi-pronged counter-terrorism doctrine in which India now uses military strikes, internal security actions, diplomatic isolation and even water-leveraging tools like the Indus Water Treaty to put pressure on Pakistan.
The government also concluded that if Pakistan-based groups and their state-sponsored networks could continue to use Indian soil as a battleground, India would have to decide the terms, timing and depth of its response. At the heart of this transformation was a combination of overt resolve and covert capability, exemplified by operations like Operation Sindoor.
Indus Water Treaty: A Strategic Leverage
For decades, the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) of the 1960s was regarded as a rare pillar of India-Pakistan stability, even after three wars. It allocated the eastern rivers (Ravi, Beas, Sutlej) entirely to India and the western rivers (Indus, Jhelum, Chenab) mainly to Pakistan, with detailed mechanisms for data-sharing, project-notification and dispute resolution.
The situation changed in Pahalgam within 24 hours. In a five-point action plan announced by the Indian government, the Indus Water Treaty was suspended until Pakistan stopped its support for cross-border terrorism. This move formally “suspended” the treaty, suspending regular meetings of the Permanent Indus Commissioners and the data-exchange mechanism. This indicated that water, once framed as a cooperative norm, is now clearly perceived as a strategic asset that can be used in response to terrorism and security crises.
‘Terrorism and talks cannot co-exist’: a change in principle
For years, India’s counter-terrorism approach oscillated between defensive grid management in Kashmir and occasional high-visibility retaliation such as the Balakot air strikes. After Pahalgam, the emphasis appears to have shifted decisively towards pre-emptive and sustained pressure.
Instead of waiting for attacks and reacting in a timely manner, agencies started focusing on pre-emptive neutralization of modules, continuous monitoring of hybrid terrorists and faster decision-making cycles for retaliation.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi underlined this change in the weeks after the attack: “India will not just respond to terror, India will hunt it down. Those who target the lives of innocent people will be taken to task beyond limits even imagined.”
In his speech on Operation Sindoor, he declared that the attackers had tried to “erase the vermilion from the foreheads of our sisters”, and in response, India “destroyed the headquarters of terror.”
In a subsequent Lok Sabha address, Modi laid out the core of India’s new counter-terrorism doctrine. “India will respond decisively to any terrorist attack on its soil,” he said. “Nuclear blackmail will not stop India,” he said.
“Terrorists, their masters and the governments supporting them will be judged on the same scale,” Modi said.
He also uttered a memorable line that has since become the slogan of the new playbook: “Terrorism and negotiations can never co-exist. Water and blood can never co-exist.”
This marked a clear departure from the past, where India’s responses were often framed as “surgical” or “kinetic” actions, with New Delhi returning to its old habit of diplomacy-heavy engagement with Pakistan. Under the new doctrine, any major terrorist attack is now treated as a strategic trigger that demands a multi-pronged, sustained response, not just a single attack.
Operation Sindoor: Attack on the nerves of terror
The most obvious military manifestation of this new doctrine is Operation Sindoor, which was launched on the midnight of May 7–8, 2025. In just 25 minutes, India fired 24 precision missiles and carried out air strikes on nine terrorist targets in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and mainland Pakistan.
Prime Minister Modi described Vermilion as “a new form of justice”, explaining that India did not strike at random locations, but at the heart of the terror infrastructure. “We struck precisely the nerve center of these terrorists and destroyed their core of operations,” he said in a subsequent parliamentary session.
Major terrorist centers affected in the operation include:
The headquarters of Lashkar-e-Taiba is in Muridke (Punjab, Pakistan).
The main base of Jaish-e-Mohammed is in Bahawalpur (Punjab, Pakistan).
Several camps in Muzaffarabad, Kotli, Rawalakot, Chakswari, Bhimber, Neelum Valley, Jhelum, Chakwal and Sialkot-Shakar Garh belt.
Home Minister Amit Shah said that more than 100 terrorists were killed and all nine terror hideouts were destroyed, no Pakistani national was killed as the strikes were limited to 100 km inside Pakistan and terror infrastructure was strictly targeted.
Operation Sindoor is not just a one-time strike; Modi has indicated that the operation is “paused” rather than ended, and could be reactivated if Pakistan starts supporting terror again.
Other major anti-terrorism operations after Pahalgam
Beyond the Vermilion and IWT suspensions, India has launched a series of sustained counter-terrorism operations that reflect the new “sustained pressure” doctrine.
Operation Mahadev: Operation Mahadev is the codename of a land-based counter-terrorism operation by India that searched for and eliminated three Pakistani terrorists directly responsible for the Pahalgam attack of 22 April 2025. Unlike Operation Sindoor, which was a strike, missile and air-based operation deep into Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and Pakistan, Operation Mahadev was an intelligence-driven search operation inside Kashmir, which ended in a high-risk jungle encounter about three months after Pahalgam. The operation began in the rugged terrain of South Kashmir, with terrorists moving through areas like Tral, Hapatnar, Bugam and Dachigam and then getting trapped in the forests around Dara/Harwan near Srinagar and Mahadev Ridge near Lidwas.
Operation Amrit: Even after Pahalgam, intelligence-led operations targeting recruitment, logistics and local support networks are continuing along South Kashmir and Jammu border. Security agencies have reported a sharp increase in militant deaths from Pahalgam compared to the year before, underscoring the increasing pressure on local cadres.
Operation Trident: It has strengthened the maritime grid along the Gujarat-Maharashtra-Goa coast, with enhanced surveillance and joint exercises between the Indian Navy, Coast Guard and State Police. The operation aims to prevent any 26/11 style maritime infiltration using real-time intelligence and stringent coastal security protocols.
Operation Vajra: The investigating agencies have conducted a nationwide crackdown on sleeper cells, cyber-terrorist networks and financial channels linked to Pakistan in cities like Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru. Authorities have blocked thousands of SIM cards and arrested more than 700 individuals linked to terror financing and communications support.
Together with Operation Sindoor and the suspension of the Indus Water Treaty, these operations create a multi-dimensional architecture where military, internal-security and diplomatic-economic instruments work in lockstep.
The New Normal
A year after Pahalgam, India’s counter-terrorism strategy is no longer about one-time precision strikes and then returning to diplomacy. Now this is the four-track principle:
military precision
constant internal security pressure
Zero-tolerance political message
hydro-diplomatic leverage
As Home Minister Amit Shah said: “We will not let terror dominate our peace.”
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first published:
April 21, 2026, 11:36 IST
newsIndia Wake-up call: How Pahalgam attack changed India’s counter-terrorism strategy
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Actress Aneet Padda seems to be grief-stricken as she lost her dear grandfather.
The actress expressed her emotions through a post on her social media account, where Aneet promised her late grandfather to follow his teachings and always be a good person. The doting granddaughter shared a picture of her holding her grandfather’s hand for one last time.
Gold price prediction today: Gold prices are likely to take cues from the US Federal Reserve stance on rate cuts in the near future, says Praveen Singh, Head Currencies and Commodities, Mirae Asset ShareKhan.
-1776748961722_d.png?w=696&resize=696,0&ssl=1 "Aneet Padda pens emotional note as her grandfather passes away")
-1776748961722_d.png "Aneet Padda pens emotional note as her grandfather passes away")
Gold price prediction today: Gold prices are likely to take cues from the US Federal Reserve stance on rate cuts in the near future, says Praveen Singh, Head Currencies and Commodities, Mirae Asset ShareKhan.