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NZ Herald
2 hours ago
- Business
- NZ Herald
Embryo screening start-up Orchid Health raises ethical questions
Orchid, Siddiqui said in a tweet, is ushering in 'a generation that gets to be genetically blessed and avoid disease'. Right now, at US$2500 per embryo-screening on top of the average US$20,000 for a single cycle of IVF, Siddiqui's social network in Silicon Valley and other tech hubs is an ideal target market. These are the data-obsessed biohackers who buy smart rings and consume boutique services like annual full-body MRIs. They are comfortable with a brave new world of probabilistic, data-driven medical decision-making, and can afford the extra costs to give their children a genetic edge. Siddiqui, who intends to have four children using her own Orchid-screened embryos, advocates a bolder idea gaining ground in the tech world: that increasingly available and sophisticated fertility technologies will supplant sex as a preferred method of reproduction for everyone. SO INCREDIBLY PROUD to share 2 HUGE updates: 1) The first baby was born using @OrchidInc technology — and he's super cute 🥰 2) I tested my own embryos with Orchid — we got SO much information & l feel confident now 🚀 This is the future of how babies will be born! — Noor Siddiqui (@noor_siddiqui_) April 22, 2024 'Sex is for fun, and embryo screening is for babies,' Siddiqui said in a video she shared on X. Soon, she suggests, it will be unremarkable for hopeful couples to choose their embryos by spreadsheet, as her current clients do, weighing, say, a propensity for heart disease that is 1.7 times the risk of the general population against a 2.7 score for schizophrenia. Zilis, the mother of four of Musk's at least 14 children, has been an Orchid client, according to two people close to the company, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. They said at least one of Musk and Zilis' offspring is an Orchid baby. Siddiqui declined to comment on that assertion, which was first reported by the Information, a tech industry news site, last summer. Musk and Zilis did not respond to requests for comment. Orchid represents a slice of a broader cultural movement in which powerful people in Washington and Silicon Valley are pushing the importance of producing offspring. Vice-President JD Vance, Musk and Siddiqui's early benefactor, the conservative billionaire investor Peter Thiel, have all repeatedly argued that falling birthrates threaten the future of industrialised nations and that people should have more children to counteract the decline – a viewpoint known as pronatalism. Julie Kang and Roshan George of San Francisco had Orchid undertake polygenic screening of 12 of their embryos; their baby, Astra Meridian, was born this spring. Photo / The Washington Post, Camille Cohen This growing movement, which is far from a monolith and has fierce debates within it, is giving a huge boost to a fertility industry already experiencing heightened demand. In February, the Trump White House issued an executive order pushing for expanded access to IVF. And while the loudest voices arguing that people should have more babies are on the right, there's broader political support for increasing access to fertility treatments: a new California law, set to go into effect next July, mandates that all large insurers cover IVF and other fertility services. In Silicon Valley, innovations that could make these services more affordable and accessible are coming, some of them backed by people concerned with population decline. Thiel has funded the egg-freezing robotics start-up TMRW, launched a US$200 million fund to bring fertility services to Asia and bankrolled a family planning app connected to a right-wing magazine. The investor, who is gay, has recently become a father to four children through IVF and surrogacy, according to people familiar with his family choices, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe personal relationships. Thiel declined, through a spokesperson, to comment. Siddiqui, who has already created 16 of her own embryos and plans to do more IVF rounds, says her company has an important role to play in advancing people's ability to have more children. She told the Post that being able to have a healthy child should be considered a basic human right, and she has hosted a podcast episode on Fighting the Fertility Crisis, a discussion about the causes of population decline. The extensive genetic screening Orchid provides, she said, can help more people have babies – by improving the IVF success rate and allaying parents' fears about future babies' health risks. 'I think everyone who wants to have a baby should be able to have one,' she said, adding that IVF and genetic testing should be made available and affordable for everyone. But Orchid doesn't just help people have children; it helps them shape their future children in dramatically new ways. And that has sparked controversy. Some critics see its polygenic scoring as veering towards a contemporary form of eugenics, enabling a world in which the rich leap even further ahead with super intelligence and superior health starting from birth. Orchid founder Noor Siddiqui says "everyone who wants to have a baby should be able to have one". Photo / Washington Post Musk, who has funded a population research institute at the University of Texas, wants to produce offspring with genes for superior intelligence, Zilis told one of Musk's biographers. The two people close to the company said Siddiqui has provided intelligence screenings in the past to couples on an ad hoc basis – including, one of them said, to Zilis and Musk. Orchid declined to comment on that and vociferously rejected any association with eugenics. Siddiqui said Orchid helps prospective parents who would otherwise fear having children because of potential genetic disorders. IVF was controversial when it began in the 1970s, she said; protesters showed up with 'pitchforks' at the offices of the scientists pioneering the breakthrough and tried 'to put them in jail' for playing God. If they had prevailed, she added, '12 million people wouldn't exist today'. Orchid screens for intellectual disability but does not provide intelligence predictions, Siddiqui said. A growing number of start-ups do, however. One of them is the Thiel-funded start-up Nucleus; another is Heliospect Genomics, the research arm of Herasight, an executive of which is a bioethicist who advocates 'liberal eugenics' – casting that term as applying not to governmental efforts to weed out undesirable births but instead to parents' use of emerging biological tools to enhance their children's prospects. Until last month, Orchid's website featured advice from that bioethicist, Jonathan Anomaly, on overcoming scepticism about its service. 'We intentionally alter our environments, breed crops so that they're more nutritious and easier to harvest, and we've invented lightning rods and vaccines to make us less likely to die from natural disasters,' he wrote. 'I find the playing God objection a bit tiresome.' Orchid removed the page after the Post asked about it. Anomaly said he now prefers the term 'genetic enhancement' to 'eugenics'. Delian Asparouhov, a partner at Thiel's Founders Fund who has invested in Nucleus, made a similar argument. 'When you choose your married partner, you're using a form of eugenics,' he said. 'When your kids are older, you invest in tutors and great schools. What's the harm in using a tool that allows you to amplify that type of effect?' 'Russian roulette' or a jet to the future? In the United States, there are virtually no restrictions on the types of genetic predictions companies can offer, and no external vetting of their proprietary scoring methods. Orchid and a handful of other start-ups offering polygenic risk scores are barrelling forward in this largely unregulated milieu. The first Orchid baby was born in late 2023, and Orchid is now in 100 IVF clinics in the US – more than twice as many as a year ago. (The company won't say how many babies have been born using its service.) Nucleus launched its screenings, which test embryos for more than 900 heritable traits and conditions, last month. Yet several genetic scientists told the Post they doubt Orchid's core claim: that it can accurately sequence an entire human genome from just five cells collected from an early-stage embryo, enabling it to see many more single- and multiple-gene-derived disorders than other methods have. Experts have struggled to extract accurate genetic information from small embryonic samples, said Svetlana Yatsenko, a Stanford University pathology professor who specialises in clinical and research genetics. Genetic tests that use saliva or blood samples typically collect hundreds of thousands of cells. For its vastly smaller samples, Orchid uses a process called amplification, which creates copies of the DNA retrieved from the embryo. That process, Yatsenko said, can introduce major inaccuracies. 'You're making many, many mistakes in the amplification,' she said, rendering it problematic to declare any embryo free of a particular disease, or positive for one. 'It's basically Russian roulette.' George Church, a genomic sequencing pioneer at Harvard University and an Orchid investor, harbours no such doubts. Questioning the advancement that enables Orchid to sequence the full genome from such a small sample – enabling long-term health predictions and near-term defect detections in an embryo – is 'like asking how much faster is a jet than walking,' Church said. Relying on a small number of cells is not the technology's only shortcoming, other experts said. Numerous fertility doctors and scientists also told the Post they have serious reservations about screening embryos through polygenic risk scoring, the technique that allows Orchid and other companies to predict future disease by tying clusters of hundreds or even thousands of genes to disease outcomes and in some cases to other traits, such as intelligence and height. The vast majority of diseases that afflict humans are associated with many different genes rather than a single gene. These algorithmic scoring methods are increasingly accepted by scientific and medical experts because they have shown promise in predicting the occurrence in a general population of a growing number of common ailments, including coronary artery disease, type 2 diabetes, inflammatory bowel disease and breast cancer. Researchers and clinicians hope that such complex genetic predictions will come to significantly enhance the quality of medical care. But the genetic code reflects only propensities: much is still unknown about how constellations of genes and gene variants interact with an individual's environment and with one another to contribute to the likelihood of any individual getting a disease in life. And for traits such as intelligence, polygenic scoring has almost negligible predictive capacity – just a handful of IQ points. Critics say such scoring could compel couples who have struggled with fertility issues to discard perfectly good and hard-won embryos based on inaccurate or incomplete information. A 2024 paper raised concerns that the scores could encourage couples to unnecessarily incur the cost and physical burden of additional rounds of IVF. Or parents might select against an unwanted trait, such as schizophrenia, without understanding how they may be screening out desired traits associated with the same genes, such as creativity. 'Maybe we don't want to screen those people out of our society,' said Lior Pachter, a computational biologist specialising in genomics at the California Institute of Technology. Embryos are tested for viability in IVF labs. Photo / Getty Images In response to questions from The Post, an Orchid spokeswoman, Tara Harandi-Zadeh, said the company explicitly counsels patients not to throw away embryos. Company executives also downplayed the value of Orchid's polygenic scores, which one described in an interview as merely an 'add-on' benefit of the full-genome sequencing the company provides. The primary benefit of its service, she said, is the ability to detect many more single-gene-derived diseases and non-hereditary mutations than a standard genetic test conducted in an IVF clinic. 'Hundreds of serious monogenic diseases – each with well-established genetic causes – can now be detected before implantation,' Harandi-Zadeh said in a statement. 'These aren't vague risks or statistical associations; they're clear, causal mutations that lead to profound outcomes: seizures, organ failure, inability to walk or speak, early death. These are missed without comprehensive whole genome embryo screening.' Orchid's marketing materials and Siddiqui's own descriptions have repeatedly showcased polygenic disease screening, however. 'The parents and their physician get much more information' from polygenic scoring, Siddiqui said in a 2023 video. 'They get information about neurodevelopmental disorders, birth defects, pediatric hereditary cancers, complex conditions, meaning conditions where it's not just a single gene, but dozens, hundreds, to millions of genes that contribute risk.' Three-month-old Astra Meridian plays at home with her parents, Julie Kang and Roshan George, who used Orchid for a full genome screening of 12 embryos and selected one that didn't have a hearing-loss gene they both carried. Photo / The Washington Post, Camille Cohen The American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics calls the benefits of screening embryos for polygenic risks 'unproven' and warns that such tests 'should not be offered' by clinicians. A pioneer of polygenic risk scores, Harvard epidemiology professor Peter Kraft, has criticised Orchid, saying on X that 'the science doesn't add up' and that 'waving a magic wand and changing some of these variants at birth may not do anything at all'. Still, many of those same experts say the scientific evidence supporting the validity of polygenic scoring methods is only getting better and already making its way into clinical use for adults. Consumer attitudes are liable to change, too. Asparouhov, the investor, said he was still critical of embryo selection based on polygenic scores. 'Right now it's a false choice,' he said. 'But in the future, it's the trust fund.' 'A license to do things' The availability and power of consumer genetic tests have exploded in the past six to 10 years, powered by far cheaper human genome sequencing and large public and private biobanks that store genetic data from hundreds of thousands of volunteers. Researchers have used that data to explore connections between genes and population-wide disease outcomes, in what are known as genome-wide association studies, or GWAS. An influential 2018 paper in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Genetics showed that groups of genes could be analysed to identify people at significantly increased risk for five common ailments, including coronary artery disease, type 2 diabetes and breast cancer. That paper and others opened up the possibility for clinicians to give people specific medical advice and treatments based on their genetic propensity. Siddiqui founded Orchid the following year. She had moved to Silicon Valley from Northern Virginia after winning, in 2012, a $100,000 grant from Thiel for aspiring entrepreneurs willing to ditch college to pursue a business idea. Forgoing a university education was anathema to her Pakistani immigrant parents, she has said, so she applied in secret as a high school senior. Siddiqui's parents eventually came around, and she credits her mother with being the impetus for Orchid. When Siddiqui was a child, her mother developed retinitis pigmentosa, an eye disease caused by a rare genetic mutation. Siddiqui became acutely aware that some people were 'genetically privileged' – while others were not, like her mum, who was functionally blind. 'For people who haven't had that type of tragedy hit them or their family, it's really hard for them to relate,' she said. In a later stint at Stanford, where she completed degrees in computer science, Siddiqui became fascinated by the way data science was transforming biology, creating new potential applications for reproduction. She also became steeped in a close-knit milieu of self-described builders who looked up to Thiel. Her husband is a cybersecurity entrepreneur she met while a Thiel fellow; a friend, Laura Deming, who was in Siddiqui's Thiel Fellowship class, has been working on age-reversing technologies since she was a teenager. One of Siddiqui's early investors, billionaire Brian Armstrong, the right-leaning CEO of the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, said he invested after seeing a tweet about a class she was teaching at Stanford, called 'Frontiers of Reproductive Technology'. He has tweeted that preimplantation genetic testing is part of a 'Gattaca stack' – a reference to a 1997 dystopian science fiction film – of emerging innovations that will 'accelerate civilisational progress'. Had she not come to Silicon Valley at an early age, Siddiqui said, she would never have had the confidence to start a company. 'Everyone here took me incredibly seriously as a 17-, 18-year-old, working on medical start-ups,' she said in an interview next to San Francisco's Ferry Building. 'It's just a place where everyone has a licence to do things.' Noor Siddiqui at 18 in her home in Clifton, Virginia, in 2012, after she won a Thiel Fellowship enabling her to pursue a project of her own design before going to college. Photo / The Washington Post, Ricky Carioti Securing early funding from Armstrong, ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin, bitcoin and genetics entrepreneur Balaji Srinivasan, 23&me founder Anne Wojcicki, and others, Siddiqui got to work combing through scientific literature to build the company's proprietary polygenic scoring methods. In 2022, Orchid had what it describes as its big breakthrough: an innovation that enabled it to sequence all 3 billion base pairs of the human genome from as few as five embryonic cells. But the paper laying out that breakthrough, published last year in the peer-reviewed journal F&S Reports, is fundamentally flawed, according to Stanford's Yatsenko and Aleks Rajkovic, chief genomics officer at the University of California at San Francisco Health Center for Clinical Genetics and Genomics. It excluded results that didn't fit its thesis, Yatsenko said, and both scientists said that by using Orchid's own lab to check those results, its authors didn't adhere to ideal scientific practice. Orchid said that the paper's findings had been verified by independent labs and that there were 'zero discrepancies' in the results. Todd Lencz, the leader of a federally funded research project examining polygenic embryo screening, said the science isn't clear enough for use in a clinic. Subtle differences among different companies' algorithms 'can produce strikingly different results in clinical contexts,' said Lencz, a professor at Hofstra University's Zucker School of Medicine. 'There's no gold-standard consensus about which method is best.' Orchid countered that slight differences in algorithms' results are no argument for preventing people from benefiting from the best scientific knowledge available. Another big issue facing Orchid and other start-ups is that polygenic scores can be up to half as accurate, according to some researchers, for some people with non-European ancestry. The primary pools of genetic data available to researchers come from European and American sources, especially the UK Biobank, a large database in the United Kingdom that includes the genetic data of a half-million people. Siddiqui told The Post that Orchid is well aware of the potential for bias, noting that she is South Asian and her husband has Middle Eastern ancestry. She said the company uses standard statistical methods to correct for limitations in the scores. In some circumstances, she said, Orchid does not offer any score. The data used to create risk scores draws on the genetics of people who are now adults and often elderly, and it's unclear how much the risks faced by people now in their 70s apply to babies being born today, said Patrick Turley, a statistical-genetics researcher at the University of Southern California. Environmental factors that affect the genes of present-day embryos in-vitro, such as microplastics and endocrine-disrupting chemicals, are different from environmental factors many years ago, he added. And lifestyle and behaviour, which also impact genes and life outcomes, are different today than for generations past. 'It's hard to make projections about how well [polygenic scores] are going to predict in the future when the world's a different place,' Turley said, while emphasising that genetic embryo selection could benefit certain couples, such as those who are carriers of rare diseases. Orchid said research has shown that genetic predispositions are 'remarkably stable' across decades. 'Genetic signal doesn't vanish just because the world changes,' spokeswoman Harandi-Zadeh said. Pachter, the Caltech computational biologist, has called Orchid's offerings 'amoral nonsense' and said conveying genetic information in numerical scores gives a certain 'class of people' the illusion of more control than they really have, and validates the feeling that 'one's own genome must be special'. Orchid rejected Pachter's criticism, too. 'It's easy to moralise from an ivory tower when your child isn't the one who might be born with a fatal disease,' Harandi-Zadeh said. 'This isn't about 'some illusion of control.' It's about giving families the ability to prevent real suffering based on the most accurate information modern science can provide.' Seeking 'peace of mind' Roshan George, a start-up executive in San Francisco, said that when he and his wife, Julie Kang, used Orchid last year, the company's genetic counsellors gave detailed explanations about the probabilities of different predictions, emphasising that 'nothing is 100 percent certain'. The couple sought out Orchid after learning, during a standard parental genetic screening process at their IVF clinic, that both were carriers of a rare genetic mutation that causes irreversible hearing loss soon after the child is born. Julie Kang and Roshan George with their 3-month-old baby, Astra Meridian, in their home in San Francisco in late May. Photo / The Washington Post, Camille Cohen The couple's main concern was whether they were passing the hearing loss variant on to their embryo. Though they probably could have found out by screening the embryos at an IVF clinic through standard processes, which amplify a snippet of the genome, George sought out full genome screening for 'a more complete picture' and 'peace of mind,' he said. George and Kang produced 12 embryos and used Orchid to screen all of them – a cost of $30,000 on top of IVF. Six were viable. Two had the hearing loss gene variant. Another two were carriers, which meant they could pass the gene on to their children but wouldn't be affected themselves. And two, called embryos JK3 and 6-JK in Orchid's report, were unaffected. The couple pored over their spreadsheets, debating which of the two to select. One embryo had a 1.5% lifetime risk of bipolar disorder, about half that of the general population. But its type 2 diabetes risk – 29% – was slightly above average, about 1.2 times that of a typical person. Another had a slightly higher risk of obesity. Given his and Kang's ethnicities – South and East Asian, respectively – George took the predictions with 'a grain of salt'. After weighing all the other factors, the polygenic scoring became 'the tiebreaker,' George said. Kang gave birth in March; so far, their daughter, Astra Meridian, has perfect hearing. Julie Kang and Roshan George play with their baby in their home in San Francisco. Photo / The Washington Post, Camille Cohen The family's experience is likely to be a window into the future, scientists said, in which an abundance of data offers families improved odds for healthy children and fraught reproductive choices. If families seek that information, the medical industry shouldn't be 'paternalistic' and deny them, UCSF's Rajkovic said, but companies have to be careful not to promise more certainty than science can deliver. Orchid's offerings are 'not ready for prime time,' according to Rajkovic. But the premise the company is pursuing – better odds for healthy babies – is 'commendable in terms of pushing the barriers,' he said. 'Because genetic disease can be devastating.' Nitasha Tiku contributed to this report.
NDTV
4 hours ago
- Politics
- NDTV
2-Month Gap Between Case, Arrest In Marriage Cruelty Cases To Stay: Top Court
New Delhi: The Allahabad High Court guidelines that advise going slow with arrest in cases involving matrimonial disputes will stay, the Supreme Court said today while hearing a case where the husband and his father had spent months in jail after the wife filed a slew of false cases against them. The guidelines framed by the High Court will remain in effect and should be implemented by the authorities, the court said. Endorsing the safeguards, a bench comprising Chief Justice of India BR Gavai and Justice AG Masih, said the husband was jailed for 109 days and his father for 103 days as a result of the criminal cases filed by the wife. "What they have suffered cannot be resituated or compensated in any manner" the court said. The woman, who is an IPS officer, has been asked to issue an unconditional public apology, which the court said was just a moral redress. Under the Allahabad High Court's guidelines, no arrest or police action can take place against the accused without a cooling off period after the First Information Report is filed. This period extends to two months and during this, any further issues will be directed to the district's Family Welfare Committee. Every district shall have at least one or more Family Welfare Court comprising at least three members. Only those cases shall be referred to the Family Welfare Committee in which the offence is punishable under Section 498-A (cruelty), along with other sections attracts a sentence of imprisonment of less than 10 years. The guidelines aim to curb the growing tendency among litigants to implicate the husband and his entire family by making sweeping allegations.
Time of India
16 hours ago
- Business
- Time of India
Chanda Kochhar-Videocon fraud case: A ₹3,250 cr loan, ₹64 cr bribe & ICICI's top banker's alleged role in it
The ICICI Bank–Videocon loan fraud case took a turn after an appellate tribunal declared former ICICI Bank CEO and MD Chanda Kochhar guilty of accepting a ₹64 crore bribe in exchange for sanctioning a ₹300 crore loan to the Videocon Group. The case stems from CBI allegations of ICICI Bank sanctioning a credit of Rs 3,250 crore to the Videocon Group companies promoted by Venugopal Dhoot in violation of the Banking Regulation Act, Reserve Bank of India's guidelines, and the credit policy of the bank. The July 2025 ruling, delivered under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), upheld the Enforcement Directorate's (ED) charges and termed the transaction a clear case of quid pro quo. Also Read: Ex ICICI Bank CEO Chanda Kochhar held guilty of Rs 64-crore bribe in Rs 300-crore loan sanction to Videocon The case, which has emerged as one of India's most high-profile corporate investigations, centres on allegations of conflict of interest, misuse of official position, and a financial trail linking Kochhar's decisions at the bank to personal benefits routed through her husband's firm. Live Events The allegations: Loan sanctions and quid pro quo Between 2009 and 2011, ICICI Bank sanctioned loans worth ₹1,875 crore to various companies in the Videocon Group, the CBI had found during the initial investigation. A key transaction occurred in September 2009, when ICICI Bank disbursed ₹300 crore to Videocon International Electronics Ltd (VIEL), a subsidiary of the group. Just a day after this disbursement, ₹64 crore was transferred from Supreme Energy Pvt Ltd, a Videocon Group company, to NuPower Renewables Pvt Ltd, a firm effectively controlled by Deepak Kochhar , Chanda Kochhar's husband. Investigators later termed this a 'quid pro quo' transaction, alleging that the payment was routed through corporate entities as indirect gratification. The ED found that Deepak Kochhar, while not the listed owner at the time, exercised significant control over NuPower, serving as its Managing Director. Early red flags and resignation The first signs of concern emerged around 2016, when whistleblowers and journalists began pointing to possible conflicts of interest between Chanda Kochhar's role in sanctioning loans and her husband's business links. In March 2018, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) initiated a preliminary enquiry into the alleged irregularities in the ICICI-Videocon loan dealings. As scrutiny mounted, Chanda Kochhar stepped down from her post in October 2018. While she cited personal reasons, the resignation came amid internal and regulatory probes into whether she had violated bank policies by not disclosing her husband's financial associations with loan beneficiaries. FIR and asset attachment orders By January 2019, the CBI escalated its investigation and registered a formal First Information Report (FIR) against Chanda Kochhar, Deepak Kochhar, and Videocon Group promoter Venugopal Dhoot. The FIR alleged criminal conspiracy, cheating, and misuse of official position, under provisions of the IPC and the Prevention of Corruption Act. In response, the Enforcement Directorate launched its own probe under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act and provisionally attached assets worth ₹78 crore belonging to the Kochhars. However, in November 2020, the Adjudicating Authority under the PMLA allowed the release of these assets, ruling that the ED had not established a direct link at that stage. Arrests and interim bail In a significant development, the CBI arrested Chanda Kochhar, Deepak Kochhar, and Venugopal Dhoot in December 2022. The arrest came after the CBI claimed it had found conclusive proof of the Kochhars' involvement in the financial arrangement with Videocon. However, in January 2023, the Bombay High Court granted interim bail to the Kochhars, calling their arrests 'arbitrary' and stating that due process had not been followed. The court noted that the arrest seemed 'routine and without application of mind,' questioning the CBI's procedural justification. Despite this, the case remained under active investigation, with the ED maintaining its stance that assets were proceeds of crime. Kochhars get Supreme Court notice In September 2024, the case returned to the spotlight when the Supreme Court issued a notice to Chanda and Deepak Kochhar in response to the CBI's petition. The agency sought to challenge the Bombay High Court's order granting interim bail, arguing that the Kochhars' continued liberty could compromise the probe. By this time, the ED had reiterated its findings before the PMLA Appellate Tribunal, focusing on the structured nature of the fund transfers and the Kochhars' control over entities that had benefited soon after the loan disbursals. Appellate Tribunal Ruling Upholds ED Case On July 3, 2025, the PMLA Appellate Tribunal ruled in favour of the Enforcement Directorate, holding Chanda Kochhar guilty of accepting a bribe of ₹64 crore in exchange for sanctioning a ₹300 crore loan to the Videocon Group. The tribunal called it a textbook case of quid pro quo and conflict of interest. It cited detailed evidence, including statements recorded under Section 50 of the PMLA Act, which it deemed admissible. The tribunal overturned the 2020 decision that had ordered the release of attached assets and observed that 'the adjudicating authority ignored crucial material facts and drew conclusions that contradict the record.' It reaffirmed that the ₹64 crore transfer was not a business transaction but a direct bribe routed via Videocon's Supreme Energy to NuPower, controlled by Deepak Kochhar. The tribunal also emphasised that Chanda Kochhar, being a member of the bank's credit committee, was under obligation to disclose any conflict of interest but failed to do so. Her silence and participation in the sanction process, the tribunal said, constituted a breach of ethical conduct and fiduciary duty.
Business Recorder
21 hours ago
- Business
- Business Recorder
IEEE Fair 2025: Sindh govt to ensure all necessary facilities: Sharjeel
KARACHI: The Sindh government has announced the provision of all necessary facilities for the IEEE Fair 2025. Senior Minister of Sindh, Sharjeel Inam Memon, has stated that the Sindh government fully supports all positive initiatives aimed at strengthening the national economy. He added that the IEEE Fair 2025 will serve as an excellent platform to showcase Pakistani products to international markets. In a statement, Senior Minister of Sindh and Provincial Minister for Information, Transport, and Mass Transit, Sharjeel Inam Memon, said that the Sindh government fully supports initiatives and platforms that contribute positively to the development and stability of the national economy. He added that revolutionary steps have been taken in the energy sector within the Sindh province, country's most affordable electricity is now being produced by the Nooriabad Wind Power Project, a major milestone for the national economy. Copyright Business Recorder, 2025
Indian Express
a day ago
- Indian Express
‘Bayath', DIY kits and bomb testing in Western Ghats: a look at ‘Pune ISIS module'
On June 28, 2025, high-profile terror operative Saquib Nachan, 66, who hailed from Padgha in Thane rural, died in judicial custody in Delhi. A former general secretary of the banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) and a convict in multiple terror-related cases, Nachan was arrested by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in December 2023 for allegedly masterminding the ISIS terror modules in Maharashtra. According to the NIA, Nachan allegedly administered 'bayath' or the 'oath of allegiance to the ISIS Khalifa' to young recruits of the terror group. His son Shamil Nachan was arrested by the NIA in August 2023 in connection with the Pune ISIS module case. NIA has so far arrested 11 terror operatives in this case. The agency alleged that these terror operatives assembled and tested bombs in Pune, besides planning terror attacks in various cities across Maharashtra and Gujarat. The breakthrough: action suspecting vehicle theft During night patrolling duty on July 18, 2023, policemen Amol Najan and Pradip Chavan nabbed three suspects in Pune city's Kothrud area around 2.30 am on suspicion of vehicle theft. The suspects, identified as Mohammed Shahnawaz Alam alias Shafi alias Abdulla of Jharkhand, Mohammed Yusuf Khan, and Mohammed Yunus Mohammed Yakub Saki, both from Ratlam in Madhya Pradesh, were found to be residing in Pune's Kondhwa. While the police personnel were taking them for a house search in Kondhwa, Alam allegedly escaped, but was later arrested by the Delhi Police in October that year. Meanwhile, the house search led to the recovery of suspicious items like 'drone material', some white powder, a pistol pouch, and a live cartridge. Subsequently, a First Information Report (FIR) was lodged against them at the Kothrud station under Indian Penal Code sections 468 (forgery), 379 (theft), 511 (offense punishable with imprisonment), and 34 (common intention), besides sections of the Indian Arms Act and the Maharashtra Police Act. The probe confirmed that Khan and Saki were members of the Al Sufa terrorist gang linked to ISIS. Both were 'most wanted' by the NIA in a case relating to the recovery of explosives from a car in Rajasthan in March 2022. The Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) then took over the probe from the Pune police on July 22. Forensic investigation confirmed that the white powder seized from the accused was an explosive substance. ATS invoked sections of the stringent Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) against the accused for their alleged involvement in terrorist activities, while posing as 'graphic designers' in Pune. ATS also claimed to have recovered bomb-making material such as 'chemical powder, charcoal, thermometer, dropper, soldering gun, multimeter, small bulbs, batteries, alarm clock,' from the accused. ATS arrested a few more suspects, including Abdul Kadir Pathan, an IT engineer S N Kazi for allegedly providing shelter and funds. ATS also seized maps, Urdu and Arabic literature, and retrieved about 500 GB of data from the electronic devices of the accused, which carried images of various locations in Pune and other areas, including the Chabad house in Mumbai. NIA takes over probe On June 23, 2023, the NIA registered the 'Maharashtra ISIS terror module case' and arrested six people: Tabish Nasser Siddiqui from Mumbai, Zubair Noor Mohammed Shaikh alias Abu Nusaiba and Dr Adnan Ali Sarkar from Pune, Sharjeel Shaikh, Zulfikar Ali Barodawala, and Aakif Ateeque Nachan from Padgha in Thane. The probe revealed that Aakif Nachan and Barodawala worked 'in collaboration' with the ATS case suspects. ATS took Barodawala into custody on August 1, 2023, suspecting him to be the 'handler' of Khan, Saki and Pathan. But considering the common links, the NIA then took over the probe from ATS on August 7 and named it the Pune ISIS Module case. Investigations revealed that Barodawala was a key accused, who along with his associates, played a role in raising the ISIS Sleeper Cell in Maharashtra. The probe revealed that Barodawala resided in Kondhwa between 2017 and 2022. He allegedly trained Khan, Saki and Alam in making bombs at their Kondhwa house. ATS alleged that they tested the bombs at a secluded spot in the Ghat section in Pune, along with certain locations in the forest areas of Satara and Kolhapur. As per a press release by NIA, Barodawala and his associates even 'shared relevant material, including 'Do It Yourself kits (DIY)' among themselves for the fabrication of IEDs and manufacture of small weapons, pistols…' 11 accused chargesheeted In November 2023, the NIA chargesheeted seven accused, including Khan, Saki, Pathan, Kazi, Barodawala, Akif Nachan and Shamil Nachan in the Pune ISIS Module case. Further, in March 2024, a chargesheet was filed against Alam and three wanted accused: Rizwan Ali of Delhi, Abdulla Faiyaz Shaikh alias Daiperwala, and Talha Liyakat Khan of Kondhwa, Pune. Meanwhile, Rizwan Ali was arrested by the Delhi Police's Special Cell in August 2024. NIA took his custody this month for investigation. Before that, in May this year, NIA arrested Abdulla Shaikh and Talha, after they 'were intercepted by the Bureau of Immigration at the Mumbai International Airport' when they returned to India from Jakarta, Indonesia, where they had been 'hiding out.' The probe revealed that Rizwan got involved in ISIS after being radicalised through social media. In 2017, he befriended Alam, who came to Delhi from Jharkhand for studies. In 2022, the duo came in touch with Khan and Saki. All four were indoctrinated to join the ISIS operations. NIA alleged that the accused had recced the areas of Western Ghats for potential hideouts. The agency also claimed to have recovered handwritten notes taken by the accused at the time of their IED fabrication training in Pune. A drone, clothes, and a knife used during the 'bayath' (oath), taken in the name of the Khalifa of ISIS, were also recovered, the NIA stated. Chandan Haygunde is an assistant editor with The Indian Express with 15 + years of experience in covering issues related to Crime, Courts, National Security and Human Rights. He has been associated with The Indian Express since 2007. Chandan has done investigative reporting on incidents of terrorism, left wing extremism, espionage cases, wildlife crimes, narcotics racket, cyber crimes and sensational murder cases in Pune and other parts of Maharashtra. While working on the 'Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) Fellowship on Tigers, Tiger Habitats and Conservation' in 2012, he reported extensively on the illegal activities in the Sahyadri Tiger Reserve in Maharashtra. He has done in-depth reporting on the cases related to the Koregaon Bhima violence in Pune and hearings of the 'Koregaon Bhima Commission of Inquiry'. ... Read More Sushant Kulkarni is a Special Correspondent with The Indian Express in Pune with 12+ years of experience covering issues related to Crime, Defence, Internal Security and Courts. He has been associated with the Indian Express since July 2010. Sushant has extensively reported on law and order issues of Pune and surrounding area, Cyber crime, narcotics trade and terrorism. His coverage in the Defence beat includes operational aspects of the three services, the defence research and development and issues related to key defence establishments. He has covered several sensitive cases in the courts at Pune. Sushant is an avid photographer, plays harmonica and loves cooking. ... Read More
