India news: Supreme Court hears Rahul Gandhi's Election Commission plea

Three Indian nationals were killed in a fire at an apartment building in western Germany's Bochum.

The Indian Embassy in Berlin said in a statement that two women and one man were among those who died, adding that all three were studying in Germany.

According to German media reports, the victims were aged between 25 and 27. Five other people were injured.

German news agency DPA said that the fire department received an alert at 4:15 a.m. local time (0212 GMT/UTC). Residents were seen calling for help as they stood at windows on the first and second floors of the building, DPA reported.

The firefighting efforts lasted several hours.

A technical malfunction was ruled out as the cause of the fire and authorities said they were investigating a suspected arson.

A 41-year-old man, who is a resident of the building, has been arrested on suspicion of murder and is in pretrial detention, reports said citing a police statement.

The reports identified the man as a Romanian national.

Meanwhile, the Indian Embassy said it was in touch with German authorities and the families of the victims. It added that it was offering all necessary assistance.

"We extend our deepest condolences to the bereaved families in this hour of grief," the statement from the embassy said.

Bochum's mayor, Jörg Lukat, called the incident a "tragedy the likes of which Bochum has not seen in decades."

Indian Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar has met United Arab Emirates' Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan while on a visit to Abu Dhabi.

Jaishankar called the meeting "warm and productive" in a post on X and said that the two sides discussed bilateral and global issues.

The Indian top diplomat's three-day visit to the UAE began on Wednesday.

A statement released by the Foreign Ministry in New Delhi earlier this week said the bilateral talks would review the progress of the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership between India and the UAE.

Jaishankar is also taking part in the Raisina Middle East forum in Abu Dhabi, co-hosted by New Delhi-based think tank Observer Research Foundation and the foreign ministries of India and the UAE.

He said a discussion with Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan at the event underpinned the importance of recognizing the increasing pace of change in the global order, highlighting that it reflects "long term trends and immediate shocks."

"Countries respond as per their specific situation. New partnerships and fresh options are inevitably explored in that pursuit," he said, adding that it involved going beyond "traditional comfort zones and developing sharper strategic awareness."

Jaishankar also called for an urgent "reform of multilateralism," which he said could be supported through a more robust "minilateralism."

On Wednesday, Jaishankar also met Georgian Foreign Minister Maka Botchorishvili in Abu Dhabi and discussed ways to further deepen bilateral cooperation in areas such as business, connectivity and culture.

The Supreme Court is slated to hear a petition filed by India's main opposition leader Rahul Gandhi and several other opposition lawmakers over a sweeping exercise which has so far purged over 130 million names from the country's electoral rolls.

A list of cases to be taken up on Thursday by a bench headed by Chief Justice of India Surya Kanta shows the petition named "Rahul Gandhi and others versus Election Commission of India and others."

The plea was filed on Monday at the end of a protest march to the Supreme Court that saw Congress' Gandhi rallying thousands, including members of the opposition INDIA bloc, student leaders, activists and civil society, through a heavily barricaded part of the capital.

The protest was the latest in a series of demonstrations calling for India's Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar to step down over alleged manipulation of voter rolls to benefit Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

The poll body, whose neutrality has come under scrutiny, rejects the allegations and says the exercise, called Special Intensive Revision (SIR), removes deceased, relocated and duplicate voters and also prevents the inclusion of "foreign illegal immigrants."

Modi's party has also dismissed the accusations and deems the protests as attempts to "create anarchy."

Meanwhile, neither Modi nor Kumar have publicly addressed the issue.

Gandhi's petition seeks an interim suspension of the nationwide revision of voter rolls, along with an audit of voter deletions and safeguards against deletions without prior notice.