Sent to Russia on the pretext of getting good salaries as security guards, at least 10 young men from various parts of India are now being forced to risk their lives and fight a war for a country they owe no allegiance to. Not only were the men duped in terms of the job that they were signing up for, but the agent who sent them to Russia also managed to extract Rs 3 lakh from each of them.

The men – who are believed to be fighting Ukraine as part of the mercenary organisation, Wagner Group – and their families have now appealed to the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) to help them return to India. A similar appeal has been made by AIMIM MP Asaduddin Owaisi and a Karnataka minister has said the state government will talk to the MEA about getting the men back.

Family members of the youngsters said on Thursday that one of them, Syed Ilyas from Hyderabad, had sent a video from Russia telling his parents that he and several others had been cheated by the agent. In the video, Mr Ilyas said he had not signed up to fight the war and pleaded with his family to be brought back to India. 

The father of one of the young men said at least 10-12 Indians – from Karnataka, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh and other states – have been duped this way and one of them, who is from Kashmir, was injured after he suffered a bullet injury to his leg. 

“My son, Abdul Naeem, and three of his friends used to work in Dubai. They got in touch with an agent called Baba who promised them high-paying security jobs in Russia and took Rs 3 lakh each from them. They were brought back to India and then sent to Russia on December 16. They were told to sign an agreement in Russian, but they refused, and relented only when the agent told them it was safe and about their security guard jobs,” Mr Naeem’s father said in Hindi. 

“At least 10-12 young men have been duped this way. My son and all the others want to come back. We have no complaints with the Russian government or their army, we are requesting them to send our sons back. We are also appealing to the Indian government to ensure their safe return,” he said.

The father added that he is in touch with his son, who is now being kept apart from his three friends. “They are being taken in planes to places far away. A man from Kashmir has also suffered a bullet injury to his leg,” he said. 

‘Will Talk To MEA’

Karnataka Minister Priyank Kharge said, “The district administration has alerted the state government and the MEA. We will talk to the MEA and do our best to bring back the young men. Not only the men from Karnataka, but everyone who has been duped into waging this war.”

On Wednesday, Mr Owaisi said he had written to External Affairs Minister S Jaishnakar and sought his help in getting the young men back to India. The MP has said at least a dozen Indians, including three from Telangana, had been duped by the agent and forced to take part in the war.

Days after the Election Commission awarded the NCP name and ‘clock’ symbol to the Ajit Pawar faction, a new symbol has been allotted to the camp led by the party’s founder Sharad Pawar. The symbol given to the Nationalist Congress Party (Shardchandra Pawar) is called ‘man blowing turha’.

The ‘turha’ is a traditional trumpet and is also known as ‘tutari’. “The Tutari in the form of great valour of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj had once deafened the emperor of Delhi. It is a great honour for our party to get Tutari (Man Blowing Turha) as our symbol for upcoming elections. Our Tutari is now ready to shake Delhi’s throne under the leadership of Sharadchandra Pawar,” NCP (Sharadchandra Pawar) said in a post on X.

The Election Commission’s order in favour of the Ajit Pawar-led faction had been given on February 6 and, on Monday, the Supreme Court had said that the name given to the Sharad Pawar camp would continue till further orders. 

Hearing a petition by the Sharad Pawar camp against the February 6 order, the bench had given the NCP founder liberty to approach the Election Commission for the symbol. It had also directed the poll panel to allot the symbol within a week of the Sharad Pawar group applying for it.

Appearing for the NCP founder, Senior Advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi had pointed out that the name allotted to the Sharad Pawar faction was an interim arrangement made by the Election Commission till the Rajya Sabha elections, which will be held on February 27.

“The budget session of Maharashtra assembly is scheduled to start from February 26 and our group will be without any name or symbol after February 27. The order said that Ajit Pawar side is the real NCP, which we will contest at a later stage. But for the Rajya Sabha elections, Sharad Pawar can use the name as a one-time measure. After February 27, technically I will be nameless, symbol-less and will be bound to obey the whip of Ajit Pawar,” Mr Singhvi had said.

Allotting the symbol to the Sharad Pawar camp on Thursday, the Election Commission wrote, “The Commission has already allotted the name of ‘Nationalist Congress Party – Sharadchandra Pawar’ to the group led by Sh. Sharad Pawar (respondent) as per the Commission’s Final Order dated 06.02.2024 in Dispute Case No. 2 of 2023, till further orders by Hon’ble Supreme Court in the matter. Further, as per the request received, ‘Man Blowing Turha’ is allotted to the group/party in all the parliamentary constituencies in the State of Maharashtra.

In a huge jolt to his uncle and the Maha Vikas Aghadi in Maharashtra, Ajit Pawar had split the NCP in July 2023 and taken oath as a deputy chief minister in the Eknath Shinde-led government. Eight other NCP MLAs had been sworn in with him. 

A Houston-based company has landed America’s first spaceship on the Moon in more than 50 years, part of a new fleet of NASA-funded, uncrewed commercial robots intended to pave the way for astronaut missions later this decade.

But while flight controllers confirmed they had received a faint signal, it was not immediately clear whether Odysseus, the lander built by Intuitive Machines, was fully functional, with announcers on a live stream suggesting it may have come down off-kilter.

The hexagon-shaped vessel touched down near the lunar south pole at 2323 GMT, having slowed from 4,000 miles (6,500 kilometers) per hour.

Images from an external “EagleCam” that was supposed to shoot out from the spacecraft during its final seconds of descent could be released.

For the time being, however, nothing is certain. 

“Without a doubt our equipment is on the surface of the Moon and we are transmitting,” said Tim Crain, the company’s chief technology officer. “So congratulations IM team, we’ll see how much more we can get from that.”

A previous moonshot by another American company last month ended in failure, raising the stakes to demonstrate that private industry has what it takes to repeat a feat last achieved by US space agency NASA during its manned Apollo 17 mission in 1972.

The current mission “will be one of the first forays into the south pole to actually look at the environmental conditions to a place we’re going to be sending our astronauts in the future,” said senior NASA official Joel Kearns.

“What type of dust or dirt is there, how hot or cold does it get, what’s the radiation environment? These are all things you’d really like to know before you send the first human explorers.”

Lunar south pole

Odysseus launched February 15 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and boasts a new type of supercooled liquid oxygen, liquid methane propulsion system that allowed it to race through space in quick time.

Its landing site, Malapert A, is an impact crater 300 kilometers (180 miles) from the lunar south pole.

NASA hopes to eventually build a long-term presence and harvest ice there for both drinking water and rocket fuel under Artemis, its flagship Moon-to-Mars program.

Instruments carried on Odysseus include cameras to investigate how the lunar surface changes as a result of the engine plume from a spaceship, and a device to analyze clouds of charged dust particles that hang over the surface at twilight as a result of solar radiation.

It also carries a NASA landing system that fires laser pulses, measuring the time taken for the signal to return and its change in frequency to precisely judge the spacecraft’s velocity and distance from the surface, to avoid a catastrophic impact.

This instrument was meant to run as a demonstration only, but Odysseus eventually had to rely on it for the entire descent phase of its journey, after its own navigation system stopped working — forcing controllers to upload a software patch to make the switch.

Exclusive club

The rest of the cargo was paid for by Intuitive Machines’ private clients, and includes 125 stainless steel mini Moons by the artist Jeff Koons.

There’s also an archive created by a nonprofit whose goal is to leave backups of human knowledge across the solar system.

NASA paid Intuitive Machines $118 million to ship its hardware under a new initiative called Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS), which it created to delegate cargo services to the private sector to achieve savings and stimulate a wider lunar economy.

The first CLPS mission, by Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic, launched in January, but its Peregrine spacecraft sprung a fuel leak and was eventually brought back to burn up in Earth’s atmosphere.

Spaceships landing on the Moon must navigate treacherous boulders and craters and, absent an atmosphere to support parachutes, must rely on thrusters to control their descent. Roughly half of the more than 50 attempts have failed.

Until now, only the space agencies of the Soviet Union, United States, China, India and Japan have accomplished the feat, making for an exclusive club.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)