MAM
SIA raids Kashmir Times office, seizes AK-47 cartridges in explosive probe
JAMMU: The State Investigation Agency of Jammu and Kashmir Police tore through the Jammu office of the Kashmir Times on Thursday, hauling out AK-47 cartridges, pistol rounds and hand-grenade pins in a search tied to allegations that the paper was pushing anti-India content.
Officials said SIA teams swept the premises, digging through computers and files as part of the widening probe. Promoters of the publication are expected to face questioning in the coming days.
Deputy chief minister Surinder Singh Choudhary urged restraint, warning that action must follow proof, not pressure. “If they have done something wrong, then action should be taken. If you do it only to build pressure, then that will be wrong,” he said.
Founded in 1954 by veteran journalist Ved Bhasin, the Kashmir Times has long carried a pro-separatist tag. After Bhasin’s death, his daughter Anuradha Bhasin Jamwal and her husband Prabodh Jamwal took charge of the paper’s management and editorial direction. Both are currently abroad. The print edition in Jammu has been defunct since 2021–22, though its online wing still ticks along. Bhasin’s name had earlier surfaced in the Ghulam Nabi Fai terror-seminar scandal.
With ammunition recovered, computers seized and questions piling up, the heat around the once-storied newsroom has suddenly turned blistering.
MAM
Sameer Nair shares heartfelt note as he exits Applause Entertainment
After nine years building the streamer’s content engine, one of India’s best-known TV men is moving on
MUMBAI: Sameer Nair is out. The chief executive of Applause Entertainment, the content studio backed by Kumar Mangalam Birla’s media empire, has announced his departure after nearly nine years at the helm, closing the chapter on one of Indian entertainment’s more quietly consequential careers.
Nair, who built Applause from the ground up in its current avatar, oversaw a slate that spanned Indian originals and international adaptations, threading together a hub-and-spoke business model that partnered with streaming platforms, broadcasters and production houses alike. The results were uneven, as they always are in content, but the ambition was not.
In a post on LinkedIn, Nair was generous to his outgoing patron. He thanked Birla for being an “inspirational boss and a great patron of the arts,” and signed off with a cheerful “Au Revoir” and a promise to remain Applause’s biggest cheerleader. Whether that sentiment survives the next chapter remains to be seen.
No successor has been named. Applause Entertainment did not immediately comment.
Nair built the machine. Now someone else has to run it — and in a streaming market that is simultaneously consolidating and convulsing, that is no small ask.
