HT Evening Brief Sept 20: BMW crash in Mumbai kills 3; Cong's SIR jibe at Amit Shah; Valarivan's silver at Asian Games

The SIR exercise in India, Elavenil Valarivan's silver at Asian Games, and North Korea's missile launch into East Sea – a recap of top five headlines today.

Good evening, readers. Welcome to your daily briefing, bringing you the top updates from politics, global affairs, entertainment, and sports.

Congress calls SIR ‘Shah Instigated Removal’, flags ‘unusually high’ voter deletions

Congress's Jairam Ramesh takes a jibe over SIR; visuals of a fatal BMW crash in Mumbai emerge; Elavenil Valarivan clinches a silver medal at the Asian Games. (PTI Photos)

The Congress has again raised concerns over the special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls being conducted by the Election Commission, alleging large-scale voter deletions during the exercise.

In this context, Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh took a swipe at Union home minister Amit Shah, describing the SIR exercise as “Shah Instigated Removal”. “SIR is actually a massive Shah Instigated Removal of voters. It is an assault on our Constitution,” Ramesh said. Read the full story here.

BMW flies off bridge, flips mid-air; terrifying Mumbai crash captured on CCTV

Terrifying visuals of a speeding BMW crashing on the Mumbai Coastal Road have emerged, with three people killed in the accident. One person was critically injured.

On the second day of the Asian Games, Elavenil Valarivan produced a sublime display of shooting in the 10m air rifle final to claim a silver at the Aichi General Shooting Range. This was Ela's second medal of the day, coming within a couple of hours after the team silver where she combined with Sonam Maskar and Vidarsa Vinod. Ela's medal is only the sixth that Indians have won in the discipline, and is only the second silver after her mentor Gagan Narang's second-place finish in 2010.

Meanwhile, Varun Sanyal’s debut ended before he could even step into the competition arena after the Indian MMA fighter ruled medically unfit for his traditional 77kg bout. Sanyal, the lone Indian male MMA competitor at the Aichi-Nagoya Games, was withdrawn after experiencing dizziness and muscle cramps following a sauna session during his weight-cutting process.

North Korea fires 2 ballistic missiles into East Sea; Japan, South Korea monitor situation: Reports

North Korea fired two missiles into the East Sea, with the launches taking place within hours of each other, multiple news agencies reported. The first launch was detected by South Korea from the Wonsan area at around 3 p.m. local time (0600 GMT), with the weapon identified as a ballistic missile. Japan's defence ministry also said it appeared to be a ballistic missile, Reuters news agency reported.

A second missile was launched a couple of hours later in the same direction, toward the East Sea, AFP reported. Both South Korea and Japan said they were making efforts to gather and analyse information to conduct a detailed analysis. Read the full story here.

Maitreyi Ramakrishnan on South Asian representation: 'We're not settling for waving hands'

Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, known for her debut series Never Have I Ever, has spoken about South Asian representation in the West. “In recent years, representation has gotten strides farther than where we were before. It’s personality first, and then the non-changeable factors of their cultural backgrounds is additional information," she said.

The actor’s upcoming Netflix film Best Of The Best takes the representation a notch further, showing Indian dance in a new light in Hollywood, including classical dance forms like Bharatnatyam. “All these dance styles come from very rich cultures and histories and our choreographers kept it real. We're not settling for just waving our hands in the air anymore. That's not happening,” the 24-year-old said. Check the full story here.