A Shiv Sena leader was chased and shot dead by the three bike-borne men in Punjab’s Moga late Thursday night. A chilling CCTV video shows how he tried to evade the shooters just minutes before he was killed.

Mangat Rai alias Manga, who was the Moga district president of Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena, had stepped out of his house on a scooter to buy milk when he was attacked. He dodged several bullets fired at him before ultimately being killed.

The first shot was fired around 10 pm, but it missed him and hit an 11-year-old boy who was crossing the area. Manga immediately fled the area on a two-wheeler.

In the CCTV footage, the Shiv Sena leader was seen trying to climb a locked gate to elude his attackers. The men, however, find him, and one of them fires at him, but the bullet misses him. He was then fired at by another man. The next frame shows the men appearing to flee the scene when they spot an approaching car. Rai was also seen running away. This time, however, the attackers gain on him and shoot him dead.

The attackers, in a video shared on Instagram, have claimed responsibility for the murder. They alleged they were upset with Mangat Rai because he used to threaten them and extort money.

The police, meanwhile, have registered a First Information Report (FIR) against six suspects.

“It is a case of personal rivalry. An FIR for murder has been registered against six suspects named by the family of the victim. They will be arrested soon,” said Senior Superintendent of Police Ajay Gandhi.

Some outfits and family members of the victim blocked the Ferozepur National Highway, demanding the arrest of the accused. Slogans were raised against the AAP government, alleging a complete breakdown of the law and order situation in Punjab.

The agitators said the protest would continue until the culprits were arrested and the family was given a government job and financial assistance and that until then, Mangat Rai’s last rites would not be performed.

Earlier, Mr Rai’s daughter said that her father eft the house at around 8 pm on Thursday to get milk. “At 11 pm, someone informed us that my father was shot dead. We want justice and will do whatever we have to do for that,” she said.

In another incident on the same night, three motorcycle riders entered a salon in Bagiana Basti around 9 pm on Thursday for a haircut and fired two shots at the owner, Devender Kumar. One bullet hit Kumar in the leg, and he was taken to Moga Civil Hospital for treatment and later referred to another hospital, police said.

Mangat Rai’s shooters claimed this attack as well saying Kumar was targetted due to personal rivalry.

Arvind Kejriwal’s Vipassana retreat in Punjab may signal a strategic shift for AAP, potentially involving party reshuffles ahead of the 2027 Punjab Assembly elections. While some speculate on internal meetings, AAP dismisses these as opposition rumors without substantiated development agendas.

A pair of stranded astronauts will be one step closer to finally coming home when the next crew launches for the International Space Station on Friday.

NASA and SpaceX are aiming for liftoff at 7:03 pm (2303 GMT) of a Falcon 9 rocket carrying a Dragon spacecraft on the Crew-10 mission, after a technical issue with ground systems prevented launch on Wednesday.

Crew-10 carries an international four-member team set to carry out science experiments on the orbital lab — but the greater interest comes from the fact that their arrival enables others to depart.

NASA duo Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams, veteran astronauts and ex-Navy pilots, have been stuck aboard the ISS since June after the Boeing Starliner spacecraft they were testing on its maiden crewed flight developed propulsion issues and was deemed unfit to fly them back.

The Starliner instead returned empty, without experiencing further major issues.

What was meant to have been a days-long trip for Wilmore and Williams has now lasted beyond nine months.

Their stay has been longer than the standard ISS rotation for astronauts of roughly six months — but still much shorter than the US space record of 371 days set by NASA astronaut Frank Rubio from 2022-2023, or the world record held by Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov, who spent 437 continuous days aboard the Mir space station from 1994-1995.

Still, the unexpected nature of their prolonged stay away from their families — they had to receive additional clothing and personal care items because they hadn’t packed enough — has garnered interest and sympathy.

It’s also become something of a political flashpoint of late, as President Donald Trump and his close advisor, Elon Musk — who leads SpaceX — have suggested that former president Joe Biden “abandoned” the pair intentionally and rejected a plan to bring them back sooner.

‘Maybe they love each other’

That claim caused uproar in the space community, especially since Musk did not provide any specifics.

The plan for the duo’s return has been unchanged ever since they were reassigned to SpaceX’s Crew-9, which arrived in September aboard another Dragon carrying only two crew members — instead of the usual four — to make room for Wilmore and Williams.

Danish astronaut Andreas Mogensen pointed this out on X, only for Musk to taunt him with a slur for mentally disabled people.

Some retired astronauts rushed to Mogensen’s defense — while Wilmore appeared to back Musk, saying his comments must have been “factual” even though he was not privy to any details.

Trump himself has been making waves for his bizarre comments, referring to Williams, a decorated former Naval captain, as “the woman with the wild hair” and even suggesting the two may have fallen in love.

“They’ve been left up there — I hope they like each other, maybe they love each other, I don’t know,” he said during a recent White House press conference.

Only once the Crew-10 spaceship arrives can the Crew-9 spaceship leave. Handover periods generally last a few days, and an earlier plan would have seen Crew-9 depart on Sunday for splashdown off the Florida coast — though it’s not clear if that timeline is still feasible.

Along with Wilmore and Williams, NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov will also be aboard the returning Dragon capsule.

Space remains an area of cooperation between the United States and Russia despite the Ukraine conflict, with cosmonauts traveling to the ISS aboard SpaceX Crew Dragons and astronauts doing the same via Soyuz capsules launched from Kazakhstan.

The Crew-10 team consists of NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers, Japan’s Takuya Onishi, and Russia’s Kirill Peskov.

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