2 min readApr 1, 2026 06:40 AM IST First published on: Apr 1, 2026 at 06:40 AM ISTTerrorists tried to blow up a police station and shot dead two people while the authorities issued shoot-at-sight orders in Batala in Punjab. A petrol pump employee, Joga Singh, was burnt alive when suspected extremists set the petrol pump afire at Kot Fatuhi village, about 35 kilometres from Hoshiarpur, a police spokesman said. The shoot-at-sight orders were issued in Batala as a precaution when tension built up after a person was beaten up in the town.Missing aircraft mysteryThe Minister of State for Defence, Arun Singh, described the disappearance of two AN-32 aircraft of the Indian Air Force as “sudden and inexplicable”. He said the government hoped to find clues to the cause of these accidents once the crash sites were located and the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder in the aircraft were recovered. Making a statement in the Lok Sabha, Singh shared the concern of members over these accidents, which occurred on March 22 and March 25, and said the courts of inquiry would examine all possible clues as to what may have led to their sudden disappearance.India’s conditions for Sri LankaAdvertisementIndia has set two preconditions to resume its mediatory role in the Sri Lankan ethnic conflict. Till there is an end to the killings of the Tamil population and resumption of direct talks by the Sri Lankan government with the Tamil representatives, the Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi, is unlikely to send any senior envoy to Colombo to resume talks, according to sources.Transporters go on strikeAbout 60,000 registered public carriers, trucks and tempos, represented by the All-India Motor Transport Congress, went off the roads in Delhi at midnight to protest against police harassment, demanding abolition of octroi, new taxes on commercial vehicles and withdrawal of the increase in excise.