Latest news with #SurjanSingh
Bloomberg
10 hours ago
- Business
- Bloomberg
Ex-Credit Suisse Banker Skips Prison for Aiding US Case
A former Credit Suisse Group AG banker who admitted to his role in a $2 billion fraud and money-laundering scheme avoided prison Wednesday after cooperating with the government. Surjan Singh testified at two US trials in Brooklyn, New York, tied to what became known as the tuna bond scandal for its dubious maritime projects, including a fishing fleet in Mozambique that triggered a financial crisis in the African nation.
The National
08-05-2025
- Politics
- The National
Indians and Pakistanis caught in crossfire plead for peace as death toll rises
Amid pounding artillery fire, Amarjeet Singh rushed to the ground floor of his house, seeking safety from the projectiles overhead. At that moment, a mortar shell fired from Pakistan tore through his home in the border district of Poonch in Indian-administered Kashmir. Splinters from the munition punctured his lungs and the 50 year old later died in hospital, his nephew Atinder Pal Singh told The National. He is among 16 people, including four children, who have been killed since Wednesday in intense fire that has bombarded Indian towns along the Line of Control, the de facto border in Kashmir. The violence began when New Delhi on Wednesday carried out air strikes on Pakistan in retaliation for a gun attack on tourists in Indian-administered Kashmir April 22 that India blamed on Islamabad. 'We ran barefoot to the hospital," said the nephew. "He was talking till his last breath but his lungs were punctured and he died despite two surgeries." Amarjeet Singh's elder brother Surjan, 61, was also wounded in one ear. 'The shelling continued all night,' he said. 'There are cracks on all the walls of my house.' A sense of jubilation has gripped many parts of India after New Delhi carried out the air strikes. Many Indians see the missile strikes on "terror groups" as a befitting reply to the attack on tourists in the Himalayan hill station of Pahalgam. But in border regions, fear and panic has gripped residents. Hundreds have fled their homes on the Indian side while others have hidden in bunkers. A Sikh temple was attacked and a teacher at an Islamic seminary was killed. The Singh family are from Kuma Khan village in Poonch, the worst-hit district in Jammu region, but shelling has also been reported in the Kashmir towns of Rajouri, Uri and Baramulla. Atinder Singh said he had never seen such an intense round of fire and pleaded with the government not to go to war. 'People living in the Indian cities are watching this on TV but we are facing it. My cousin's daughter is in class four and son is in class eight — who will think of them?" he said. "Seventy per cent of Poonch's population have left the town. Not a single shop is open, we needed water bottles but couldn't get them. 'We request that the government stop this war and let us live peacefully. No one in Poonch has slept for the last three days.' Similar sentiments were echoed by Dr Sarfaraz Mir, who lost his 10-year-old twin cousins Urva Fatima and Zain Ali in the violence. 'The mortar hit the roof of their house and splinters hit my cousins – they died on the spot,' Dr Mir told The National. 'What happened in Pahalgam was wrong and India has already avenged the killings, but this must stop now. But what Pakistan is doing is also wrong. War has never been a solution.' India and Pakistan, both nuclear-armed nations, have fought three wars over Kashmir, the last in 1999 which lasted for two months. More than 500 Indian soldiers were killed, while estimates of Pakistani losses range from 400 to about 4,000. There have been regular skirmishes and cross-border fire at the border since but the nations agreed to a ceasefire in 2021, which was broken after April 22 and the attack on tourists. In the Pahalgam ambush, 26 people were killed by armed gunmen in the Himalayan picnic spot in the Kashmir valley. The Resistance Front, an extremist group, claimed responsibility. New Delhi accuses Islamabad of backing militant groups in Kashmir, a charge denied by Pakistan. Anas Hamdani, 31, who lives in Karachi, said he fears an all-out war with mass loss of life. His niece was injured in an explosion outside her college on Thursday in Rawalpindi, a city about 40km from the border that houses Pakistan's military headquarters. The Pakistani military has suggested an Indian drone was involved. 'We are worried," Mr Hamdani told The National. "I was talking to my niece, she is at a hospital in Rawalpindi. She told me that a bomb exploded just 30 minutes ago near her college and that they were running home. 'We have lost a seven-year-old boy in Kashmir. By what number will this be multiplied if this war escalates? It will not be Pakistan or India who win – it will be humanity that loses. We pray that both sides act sensibly and save precious lives.'
The Print
07-05-2025
- Politics
- The Print
‘3 splinters hit him, 1 got lodged in his lung'—fear & death in Poonch after shelling by Pakistan
'Three splinters hit him. Two were removed, but one was lodged in his lung. That's what caused the most damage,' said Surjan Singh to ThePrint over the phone. Pakistan launched intense shelling early Wednesday morning in Poonch following India's Operation Sindoor. According to a statement issued by Press Information Bureau (PIB) at 1.44 am, Op Sindoor consisted of precision strikes against nine terror infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) between 1.05 am and 1.30 am (IST) Wednesday, according to PIB. New Delhi: It was 8 am. Surjan Singh was lying in bed when the house shook. The next thing he knew, the ceiling of his home in Jammu's Poonch district had collapsed and he, along with his son, were trapped under the debris. Meanwhile, splinters from the shell had hit his nephew, Amarjeet Singh, as he was running down the stairs. Amarjeet was rushed to the district hospital, but he succumbed to his injuries. 'The doctors couldn't save him,' he added, weeping. Amarjeet, a 52-year-old retired Army official, is survived by his wife and two children, aged 13 and 8. He lived in Poonch town, just metres away from the district hospital. A few kilometres away, a local shopkeeper, Amreek Singh, was killed when a shell exploded near his shop at Syndicate Chowk. According to police officials, a gurdwara and a mosque were also damaged in the shelling. Amreek terms the attack as being the 'worst' he has seen. 'Even during the Kargil war, we had witnessed shelling, but that didn't last long. This time civilian areas were attacked and the shelling continued throughout the night,' he said. At least 15 civilians, including a woman and three children, were killed, while more than 45 others have been injured, according to official sources in the Indian Army. All the victims have been identified as residents of Poonch district in Jammu. Police report that all victims were hit by direct shelling from the Pakistan army. 'The children killed were teenagers between 11 and 13 years old. We at the District Hospital in Poonch are doing our best to save lives,' said Dr Pravez Ahmed Khan, Chief Medical Officer, Poonch, to ThePrint. The district administration and police are relocating residents to safer areas identified in the Surankote and Mandi blocks. Some families are also moving to Rajouri and Jammu districts to take shelter with relatives. Meanwhile, police are patrolling in bulletproof vehicles and helping transport the injured to hospitals. 'We have no option but to evacuate the injured from areas within the firing range and move them to safer locations. These sites have been identified, and both police and army personnel are on the ground conducting rescue operations,' said Mohammad Rashid, Station House Officer, Poonch City. Also read: Among India's targets in Pakistan, terror camps that hatched multiple attacks—26/11, Pulwama to Pahalgam Oppn unity in face of attack Shobit Kumar Tandon, 28, was on the second floor of his house in Ward Number 2 of Poonch city when he heard the sound of the shelling. He immediately told his family to move to the lower floors of the house. But before they could all make it, a shell tore through the ceiling and landed in the kitchen, where his mother was cooking. She tried to run but was hit in the thigh. Shobit, who had managed to reach the first floor, was struck by splinters from the shell that hit his house. He sustained injuries to his thighs, back, and hand. He and his mother were rushed to the district hospital by family members. Due to the severity of his injuries, Tandon was later referred to Jammu for further treatment. 'It was 7 in the morning. The shelling was intense, so I asked everyone to run to the ground floor. But the gola fell in the kitchen where my mother was cooking. Thank God we're alive,' said Tandon, speaking to ThePrint from the district hospital in Poonch. Tandon, who works in the revenue department of Poonch district, is being shifted to Jammu for further medical care. BJP MLC Pradeep Kumar, who has been involved in rescue efforts said that since the intense shelling began around 2 am, he has been helping transport the injured to the district hospital. 'It started with two Forest Department officials who were injured. I rescued them and took them to the hospital. The Pakistanis spared nothing—they've targeted mosques, gurdwaras, and civilian homes. This is massive,' said Kumar. The incident has brought together members of opposition parties, who are now collectively planning ways to offer assistance to the affected residents. National Conference leader and Poonch MLA Ajaz Ahmed Jan has called for calm and unity in the face of the crisis. 'I am on the ground, along with the police department, to ensure everything remains peaceful. We need to stay united in this situation,' Jan said to ThePrint. Meanwhile, Surjan Singh, who also has relatives scattered in different districts of Jammu, says that he will not leave his house and relocate, even if it's temporary. 'My nephew Amarjeet was an army officer. When he joined the forces, he knew he would have to give his life. Unfortunately, he gave his life after retirement but he did it for the nation,' said 61-year-old Surjan. (Edited by Zinnia Ray Chaudhuri) Also read: 'Some screamed with every thud, others prayed'—J&K residents recall night of Operation Sindoor
The Guardian
09-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The Great Indian, London: ‘A thoroughly delightful food pub'
The Great Indian, 139 Marlborough Road, London N19 4NU. Small plates £7.50-£11.50, large dishes £9.50-£23.50, desserts £6.50, wines from £23, Cobra £6.30 At the top of the menu at the Great Indian, a new and thoroughly delightful food pub in London's Archway, there's a set of slogans of a sort guaranteed to make my teeth itchy. It says things like 'comfy', 'social' and 'vibe dining'. I looked up the last one. Apparently, it means the place is, y'know, nice. We can all get behind nice. It was, however, another phrase that really stood out. It said 'Indian influenced'. The Great Indian is owned by Aman Dhir who already has a takeaway of the same name in Hackney where they serve chicken tikka, seekh kebabs, aloo gobi and the rest. The executive chef here is Surjan Singh, an experienced restaurant consultant from India known there as Chef Jolly and familiar as a judge on MasterChef India. He has been spending time in Archway, alongside his Indian cooks and the Indian front of house team. The charming head waiter who served us had not long arrived in the UK from India. It speaks volumes about increasing sensitivities around dish origins and cultural appropriation that an entirely Indian team apparently think it wise to open up a little distance between the satisfying and well-executed Indian food they are serving and the mere suggestion that it might actually all be Indian food. Perhaps it's because, among the small plates section of the evening menu, there are gunpowder Buffalo wings, which the pious might allege, with a performative eye-roll, must come from the upstate New York bit of India. Likewise, there's a lamb 'taco roti', which might come from the Mexican part. These are dainty folds of flaky, buttery roti, each filled with a hefty spoonful of a hot, dry lamb curry, in which the sauce has almost been cooked out to a crust around the meat. These are topped with crispy deep-fried curry leaves and arrive at the table in one of those zigzagged metal trays used to keep hand-sized tacos in one piece. If these were served as canapés at a party, one to which I would very much like an invitation thank you, anyone with good taste would be loitering by the door from the kitchen to get their hands on them as they arrived. Given all the ingredients, this is clearly an Indian dish. To describe it otherwise would be to set weird, po-faced, and arbitrary boundaries around what fits within a culinary tradition and what does not. We all play with our food. Be thankful that we do. The word 'influenced' is happily redundant. Definitions can still be helpful. The Great Indian is inside what was the Prince Alfred, an old boozer on a north London residential street. It is a restaurant serving Indian food housed in a pub. I believe we call those gastropubs. It is not, however, a Desi pub, like the Yew Tree in Wolverhampton, which I reviewed at the end of last year. A Desi pub is one which happens to have an Indian kitchen, generally serving the local Asian community among others; a place where you genuinely could just go for a quick pint or seven. There is a bar here, a pretty one with a jade-green tiled frontage, boasting a collection of gins, alongside Cobra, Guinness and Neck Oil Session IPA on draft. But the two high-tops for drinking at feel solely like places at which to wait for tables in the abutting dining room, rather than somewhere to pass the night. This isn't a criticism. It's a description. The ceiling is hung with artificial foliage and there are multilayered rattan lampshades. They care about small things. Start with the spiced poppadoms, which have been smoked and come with a chutney in the colours of the Indian flag. At the bottom there's a date and tomato relish, in the middle, some spiced yoghurt and, on top, of that a dense mess of finely chopped sweet-sour mint. Hilarious amounts of work have gone into this idea, given that digging in with a teaspoon doesn't quite reveal the full beauty of the flag. But it's a great accompaniment and a nice story. Alongside the roti tacos we have their tamarind-rich chaat. It surrounds two flaky vegetable samosas, served warm, which peek out shyly from the crust of fried noodles and pomegranate seeds. At lunchtime there are thalis at £14.90 built around the likes of butter chicken or tandoori paneer. Or there are bigger dishes priced in the mid-teens, which are proof once more of the power and joy, the depth and profundity, of brown food. The Punjabi lamb curry has a thick gravy the colour of freshly turned London clay, heavy with roasted spice and the sort of acidity that opens everything up. The dal makhani is described as having been simmered for 48 hours and there is a buttery-rich quality to it that suggests they really aren't kidding. Come for the lamb tacos; stay for the lentils. Assume no one is watching and spoon it neat from the bowl. It's cold and raining out there. Yellow weather warnings are in place. This dal will keep any storm at bay We forgo a side of rice in favour of the chicken biryani, served in its own cast-iron pot. Take off the lid and breathe in the hot waves of cardamom and the sweetness of caramelised onions in among each spice-dusted long grain. Lubricate it with a little of the snowy garlic yoghurt with which it arrives. Or scoop it away with a crisp-crusted naan filled with pickled chillies and stringy cheese, which feels like the sort of thing you might order after a long session down the pub, when boozy appetite is fully in charge, rather than before. That one item shows a particular determination to feed. The sense is very much of a kitchen which, given the price point, is putting its back into the cooking rather more than might be expected. Desserts are sweet, creamy things. Sliced orbs of syrupy gulab jamun, for example, come on a splodge of rabdi, made by simmering sugar-rich milk with cardamom and saffron until it thickens. It's topped with almonds and pistachios, and serves as a great defence against the miserable, thrashing weather outside. The Great Indian might be a slightly grandstanding name for this newcomer, but it sits comfortably alongside places like the Tamil Prince, only a few miles away, which have helped redefine what the gastropub might be. Doubtless, some locals will feel they've lost an old boozer. They should think, instead, of having gained a great Indian restaurant. This week's high-profile closure is perhaps less surprising than some. Café Laperouse is an outpost of a Parisian restaurant group which opened here less than two years ago inside the OWO (Old War Office) hotel on London's Whitehall. Now it is shutting its doors. Despite the high prices – main courses topped out at £58 – it was dogged by a one-out-of-five hygiene rating at opening and less than favourable reviews, including from this column. In better news, chef Livia Alarcon, who cooked up a storm at Queens Bistro in Liverpool, has been announced as the head chef of the Dog and Collar, a new food pub on the city's Hope Street. Alarcon, who is currently representing the northwest on BBC2's Great British Menu, says she intends to 'celebrate British produce in a pub setting, pulling influence and inspiration from the north, my culture and upbringing,' The new pub opens at the end of the month ( And news of another chef who made his name in Liverpool. Anton Piotrowski, who won MasterChef; the Professionals before opening the much-admired Roski in the city, is returning to his home town of Lynmouth in Devon. He is taking over the kitchens of the Rising Sun Inn, a 14th-century thatched tavern on the town's harbourside, which he says has long been one of his favourites ( Email Jay at or follow him on Instagram @jayrayner1
