This Week in Explainers: How Bollywood is embroiled in a big betting racket

The cricket World Cup has come to India. It doesn’t feel like it though. The frenzy is missing (thus far) and so are fans from stadiums as we saw in the opening game at Ahmedabad’s Narendra Modi Stadium. But far off the field, there is no dearth of drama. There have been arrests galore – a journalist and a politician – in two separate cases. A betting racket is unravelling with Bollywood at the centre of it. And cricketer Shikhar Dhawan got a divorce. (Yes, we’ll explain why that piqued our interest.)

The poll season is coming and politicians are making their moves. The Bihar caste survey results were out. That angered the BJP but might just favour Nitish Kumar. But will this be enough to take on the Mighty Modi in 2024? We analyse.

The other big but heartbreaking news came from Sikkim. Flash floods are causing massive devastation in the mountain state amid a rising death toll with hundreds still missing.

We took a deep dive into the Sikkim disaster, the big betting scandal, and a lot more. Here are our top explainers of the week.

1. The scenic state of Sikkim turned into watery hell. Torrential rainfall and a Glacial Lake Outburst Flood (GLOF) event at South Lhonak Lake led to widescale death and destruction.

But what is GLOF? It is when a boundary around a glacial lake breaks and a huge amount of water rushes downstream, destroying everything along the way.

This is exactly what happened in Sikkim. With rising temperatures, glaciers in the Himalayas have been melting rapidly and expanding lakes like the one in South Lhonak. Here, we explain in detail.

More than 50 people have died in the Sikkim flash floods and 140 are still missing. PTI

2. While the flash floods are a reminder of the big threat of climate change, the other challenge that mankind faces is the pandemic. COVID-19 is behind us (or at least we have learnt to live with it) but another disease looms large. They are calling it Disease X. It is said to be 20 times deadlier than the novel coronavirus and could potentially cause up to 50 million deaths. Sounds dreadful. What is Disease X and when is it coming? We have some answers.

A woman walks past pandemic prevention workers in a neighbourhood in Beijing during a COVID-19 outbreak. Disease X is expected to be deadlier than the coronavirus. File photo/Reuters

3. China is infamous for the pandemic but also for prying. The neighbouring nation continues to be an irritant to India. Is Beijing now funding news websites?

Last month, The New York Times published a report alleging NewsClick is funded by Neville Roy Singham, who is pushing Chinese propaganda. Now the Delhi Police is cracking down on the media organisation. There were raids on the houses of several NewsClick journalists and its editor Prabir Purkayastha was arrested.

We bring you all the details about the Chinese funding row, Purkayastha’s murky past, and what the police have unearthed in these explainers.

Material confiscated after a raid on the NewsClick office is being brought to the special cell office in Delhi. PTI

4. Another scandal that kept law enforcement on its toes was the Mahadev gaming app case. It’s a betting racket and Bollywood celebrities have now been embroiled in the controversy.

The big names who are under the scanner of probe agencies are Ranbir Kapoor, Shraddha Kapoor, Huma Qureshi, and Kapil Sharma. How much was their involvement and what’s in store for them in the coming days? We take a look.

Shraddha Kapoor is being questioned over the source of the money she received from the Mahadev betting app and Ranbir is under the scanner for promoting the app.

5. While trouble brews for Bollywood, a celebrity who seems to have waded out of a mess… or a rather messy marriage is cricketer Shikhar Dhawan. His divorce was finalised and it was granted on the grounds of mental cruelty.

We aren’t dwelling on what went wrong in the marriage but on the Indian law and what it says about cruelty. Don’t miss our most-read explainer of the week.

Shikhar Dhawan has been granted divorce by a Delhi Court on grounds that the cricketer was subject to cruelty by his estranged wife Aesha Dhawan. Image courtesy: @shikhardofficial/Instagram

6. It is the Nobel season. The Peace Prize is the most talked about and arguably the most controversial. Mahatma Gandhi is synonymous with peace. But surprisingly, was not given the honour.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee considered awarding him posthumously in 1948, but the idea did not come to fruition. Here’s our essay on this rather fascinating trivia.

Enjoy the splainers.

PS: No Indian won the Nobel this year until now (The prize in economics will be announced on Monday). But hey, before that, we have a big match against Australia on Sunday. Let’s keep our fingers crossed for a victory.

If you are not a cricket fan, then you can spend your day off reading.

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