Wagh Bakri Tea Group executive director Parag Desai today died at 49, the company announced on social media. He suffered a brain hemorrhage after a fall last week, and died in hospital on Sunday.

“With profound grief, we regret to inform the sad demise of our beloved Parag Desai,” the company said in an Instagram post.

Several media reports claimed Desai fell after he was chased by stray dogs. “It was stated that the patient fell down after being chased by dogs but apparently, there were no dog bite marks on his body,” said the hospital.

“A CT scan revealed acute subdural hematoma with bilateral frontal contusion,” the statement said.

Shaktisinh Gohil, Rajya Sabha MP and Gujarat Congress chief, offered his condolences and wrote, “Very sad news coming in. Parag Desai, Director and owner Wagh Bakri Tea passed away. He had a brain hemorrhage following a fall. May his soul rest in peace. My condolences to the entire Wagh Bakri family across India.”

Tech Mahindra also paid his tributes to Desai and called it an “untimely loss”. “Very sad to hear about Parag Desai’s death. A terribly untimely loss indeed,” he said in a post on X.

Parag Desai was one of the two executive directors on the board of Wagh Bakri Tea Group, who led their transformation into tea lounges and e-commerce.

He was spearhead the group’s sales, marketing and export departments. He was also an expert tea taster and evaluator.

Wagh Bakri Tea Group was founded in 1892 by Narandas Desai. Today, it has a turnover of Rs 2,000 crore.

The group has presence in Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Delhi, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, Chhattisgarh, Western Uttar Pradesh, Goa, Punjab, Chandigarh, Himachal, Jammu and Kashmir, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal, and recently forayed into Bihar, Jharkhand and Odisha.

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Two armed attacks on Monday left at least 16 people dead, including a dozen police officers, in regions of Mexico plagued by violence related to drug trafficking, authorities said.

In the southern state of Guerrero, unidentified attackers targeted a security patrol in the municipality of Coyuca de Benitez, prosecutor Alejandro Hernandez said.

According to preliminary information, 11 members of the municipal police force were killed, he said, adding that the motive for the massacre was being investigated.

A senior state security official was traveling in the convoy when it was attacked, authorities said, without confirming media reports that he was murdered along with police bodyguards.

Security forces were later seen patrolling the area — where several lifeless bodies lay on the ground — as a police helicopter flew overhead.

The second attack, in the neighboring western state of Michoacan, left five civilians dead and two more injured, authorities said.

A group of gunmen attacked a brother of the mayor of the town of Tacambaro, according to the state prosecutor’s office.

A restaurant worker and a member of the police force were among those killed, while the mayor’s brother was wounded, it said.

In a video posted on social media, gunmen were seen opening fire before fleeing in several vehicles.

Mexico is plagued by cartel-related bloodshed that has seen more than 420,000 people murdered since the government deployed the military in its war on drugs in 2006.

Since then, the country’s murder rate has tripled to 25 per 100,000 inhabitants.

Mexico has also registered more than 110,000 disappearances since 1962, most attributed to criminal organizations.

Guerrero and Michoacan are among the country’s most violent areas, due to confrontations between rival drug traffickers and security forces.

Although it is home to the famed coastal resort of Acapulco, Guerrero is one of Mexico’s poorest states.

Violence — particularly targeting low-level officials — often escalates across the country in the run-up to elections. Presidential and parliamentary polls are set to be held next year.

Since taking office in 2018, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has championed a “hugs not bullets” strategy to tackle violent crime at its roots by fighting poverty and inequality with social programs, rather than with the army.

 Israel will not hold off on a possible ground invasion of Gaza over the issue of captives being held there, Israel’s energy minister told German tabloid newspaper Bild.

Hamas gunmen killed 1,400 people and took more than 200 hostages in cross-border assault on Oct. 7.

In an interview published on Tuesday, energy minister Israel Katz said everything would be done to bring the hostages home. “But that cannot hinder our actions including the ground offensive, if we decide on it,” he was quoted as saying.

“Hamas wants us to deal with the captives and wants the military to not go in to eliminate their infrastructure. That will not happen,” Katz added.

The armed wing of Hamas said on Monday it had released two more female civilian captives on health grounds in response to Egyptian-Qatari mediation efforts.