Vehicles with fake number plates were used to target and kill Chandranath Rath, personal assistant to Suvendu Adhikari, the outgoing Leader of Opposition in the West Bengal Assembly, late on Wednesday night (May 6, 2026), according to the West Bengal police. A Special Investigation Team (SIT) has been formed to probe the attack, and forensic experts have visited the scene of the crime in North 24 Parganas, Madhyamgram. “If he was not my aide or I did not defeat [outgoing Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee] in Bhabanipur, maybe they would not have targeted Rath. His crime was being my personal assistant,” Mr. Adhikari said, after visiting his aide’s family at the Barasat Medical College and Hospital where a post-mortem was being conducted on Rath’s body.
The U.S. military said it carried out strikes on Iranian military targets on Thursday (May 7, 2026) after an attack on three American destroyers in the Strait of Hormuz, while Tehran accused Washington of striking first. The violence threatened to unravel a fragile truce in effect since April 8 that brought an end to weeks of U.S.-Israeli attacks on the Islamic republic, which has retaliated with strikes across West Asia and by blocking the strait, a vital route for oil and gas shipments.
