This Week in Explainers: Why India is bringing home more of its gold reserves from abroad

The month of October is come to an end. And the last week of the month has seen many developments taking place in India.

The week gone by saw India launching a mega tri-service military exercise across Gujarat and Rajasthan, called Trishul 2025. Running until November 10, it is the largest of its kind since the Operation Sindoor strikes six months ago, and is aimed at enhancing jointness and operational synergy among the three services — the Army, Navy and Air Force.

This week we also learnt that India wound up its presence at a strategic airbase in Tajikistan, which it had helped develop and run since 2002. Though India did not have any permanent air assets there, two-three Indian military helicopters, gifted to Tajikistan but operated by IAF personnel for disaster relief and humanitarian assistance, were based there. Also, at one time, a couple of Su-30 MKIs were stationed there briefly.

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And India’s gold rush continued in the past week. No, we aren’t talking about people buying gold but the nation’s central bank, the Reserve Bank of India, bringing back its gold reserves from Western countries. Today, India holds more than 65 per cent of its gold reserves at home, nearly double the share from four years ago.

We also had the dramatic hostage situation in Mumbai wherein a man took 17 children hostage only for it to end with the authorities shooting him dead after a three-hour standoff.

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In the other big news this week, President Droupadi Murmu took to the skies in a Rafale fighter jet. While the sortie was historic, it was a photograph with a fellow pilot that really grabbed the eyeballs of everyone.

There was also Delhi’s failed cloud seeding experiment that left the residents of the Capital to choke on poor air and the mind-boggling amount of money spent on the trial.

In our weekly roundup, we talk about all these stories and more.

1) India has withdrawn from the strategically important Ayni airbase in Tajikistan. Also known as Gissar Military Aerodrome, India spent a considerable amount of money — reportedly about $70 million — to upgrade the infrastructure of the dilapidated Soviet era airbase to make it suitable for landing and take-off of most of the fixed-wing aircraft, and developed hangars.

Notably, the airbase was used by India for logistic missions, it did provide the country a strategic as Pakistan and China share borders with the country.

But why has New Delhi withdrawn from the Tajikistan airbase? What will be the implications of such a move? Here’s everything you need to know.

2) This isn’t the only big news pertaining to India’s military this week. On October 30, India’s Armed Forces — the Army, Navy and Air Force — began its military exercise, ‘ Trishul’ along the western border with Pakistan, showcasing the joint operational capability and strategic preparedness of the forces.

The exercise will see participation of the special forces commandos, missile batteries, warships, battle tanks, and attack aircraft, including the Rafale and the Sukhoi Su-30, carrying out simulated offensive strikes into southern Pakistan.

The military exercise has prompted Pakistan to expand a notice to air missions (NOTAM) covering a larger part of its airspace, mostly along its central and southern routes.

3) For three hours on Thursday, Mumbai was gripped in a nerve-wracking hostage situation when a man kidnapped 19 people, including 17 children inside RA Studio in suburban Mumbai’s Powai region.

The crisis ended after the captor, Rohit Arya, was shot by police commandos as he reportedly opened fire. He was taken to hospital, where he later succumbed to his wounds.

But who exactly was Rohit Aryan? What was his motive to take the people hostage? And how did the cops end the crisis? Our story explains.

4) If Mumbai was in the news for the hostage drama, then New Delhi was also in the news for its perennial winter problem — noxious, grayish fog that envelops the city, fouling the air with an acrid smell, smudging the outlines of monuments and making breathing difficult for millions of residents.

But this time, Delhi decided to do something about; it carried out two trials of cloud seeding to induce artificial rain that would wash pollutants away.

Alas, this experiment didn’t yield the results Delhi was hoping for. The cloud seeding led to less than one millimetre of rain and reduced PM2.5 levels from 220-230 to 203-207.

If you are among the many thinking why Rs 60 lakh-per sortie failed, here’s what happened and why.

5) India loves its gold, even the Reserve Bank of India. The country’s central bank has brought over 64 tonnes of the precious metal back between March 2025 and September 2025. As of the end of September, the RBI held 880 tonnes of gold, of which 576 tonnes were stored domestically — an all time-high.

But why is it doing so? There’s a number of reasons for RBI’s gold move and we explain it all here.

6) Earlier this week, President Droupadi Murmu made history by undertaking a Rafale sortie from Ambala in Haryana. This makes her the first Indian President to have flown in two fighter aircraft of the Indian Air Force. In April 2023, she had undertaken a sortie in a Sukhoi-30 MKI from the Tezpur Air Force Station in Assam.

But what was even more significant during this event was President Murmu’s photo with IAF officer Squadron Leader Shivangi Singh. That’s because, the IAF personnel is the same who Pakistan claimed to have captured after her Rafale was shot down during Operation Sindoor.

In our report, we explain the significance of this moment.

7) It’s been a year since Ratan Tata has passed away. And with his demise, the Tata Group finds itself facing a plethora of crises. The business empire is yet again a divided house. For months, a boardroom power battle between trustees has exposed internal rifts that forced the government to step in and prevent a repeat of the very public legal tangle that engulfed the Tata empire in 2016, when its former chairman Cyrus Mistry was ousted from the group.

And this tussle took its latest turn in the past when influential Mehli Mistry, a trustee of Tata Trusts was voted off the board of two important trusts — Sir Dorabji Tata Trust and Sir Ratan Tata Trust — which could potentially lead to his ouster.

How did the votes land up against Mistry? And what does this mean for the future of the Tata Trusts? The answers are here.

8) In India’s quest to be come self-reliant, the Border Security Force (BSF) has inducted two indigenous dog breeds, Rampur and Mudhol Hound, into its ranks. Over 150 of these native dogs are now deployed across operational zones along India’s eastern and western borders.

And the move has been appreciated by none other than Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his Mann ki Baat address.

These indigenous canine breeds have come a long way. Read the story of how these dogs, which were once part of Indian royalty have become our sentinels at the borders.

That’s all we have for you this week. If you like to go beyond the headlines, bookmark this page.