Morning digest: SC to hear plea seeking FIR against Justice Varma over unaccounted cash; Opposition slams Centre’s ‘inaction’ on U.S. tariffs, and more

The Hindu Morning Digest gives a select list of stories to start the day. Read the top news today on March 28, 2025

A petition seeking a direction to the police to register a First Information Report and investigate allegations of “huge sums of unaccounted money” found on the official residential premises of sitting Delhi High Court judge Justice Yashwant Varma is listed in the Supreme Court on March 28, 2025. The case is listed before a Bench of Justices A.S. Oka and Ujjal Bhuyan.

Expressing concern over the “tariff war” looming over the global economy after U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent announcement, Opposition members in the Rajya Sabha on Thursday (March 27, 2025) asked the Centre if it had any specific plans to deal with the threat. The MPs raised the issue during a discussion on the Appropriation and Finance Bills. Senior Congress MP and former Finance Minister P. Chidambaram, who initiated the debate on the Bills, urged the Centre to clarify the country’s response to Mr. Trump’s statement that he would impose reciprocal tariffs on April 2, 2025.

Three policemen were killed and three security personnel, including two policeman and one Army jawan, were injured in the ongoing operation in Kathua. Two militants are also believed to be killed in the operation, as around four more militants are suspected to be active at the encounter site, said official sources. Officials said the hiding militants opened indiscriminate fire at the police patrol. The injured were hospitalised immediately and are stated to be “stable”.

Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Thursday (March 27, 2025) claimed in the Lok Sabha that nearly 450 km border with Bangladesh has not been fenced yet due to appeasement politics of the Trinamool Congress government that is to facilitate “infiltrators.” The Minister claimed that whenever the Border Security Force (BSF) undertook fencing work, the cadres of Trinamool obstructed the construction by “sloganeering and force.” The Minister said the illegal Bangladeshi nationals acquire Aadhaar and voter identity card from a particular district in West Bengal and come to Delhi armed with those documents posing as Indians.

The farmers of western Uttar Pradesh, who latch on to every social media post of Union Minister and Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) chief Jayant Chaudhary, queried the chatbot Grok on Thursday (March 27, 2025) morning to understand the dystopian literary context of his cryptic post on policing in Uttar Pradesh. Responding to a news story in the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s mouthpiece Organiser — ‘Meerut police to take legal action and cancel passports of those who offer Eid-ul-Fitr namaz on roads’ — Mr. Chaudhary described the move as “policing towards Orwellian 1984!” in an X post.

The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) announced on Thursday (March 27, 2025) that the CA Final exam would now be held three times in a year instead of two. The exams would be in the month on January, May and September. The decision was taken at the 26th Council meeting of the apex regulatory body for chartered accountancy in the country. 

A knife-wielding assailant in Amsterdam seriously wounded five people — including two from the United States, one from Belgium and one from Poland — in a stabbing attack Thursday (March 27, 2025) on a busy shopping street, Dutch police said. The attack lasted several minutes before the assailant was stopped by a passerby near the city’s Dam Square in the late afternoon. Police cordoned off the area and several ambulances and a trauma helicopter were called to the scene.