Soutik Biswas

Image copyright EPA

On Thursday night, a 21-year-old became the first Indian woman to qualify for a gold medal contest at the Olympic Games.

Ninth-seeded PV Sindhu, lithe and lethal on court, routed her higher-ranked Japanese opponent Nozomi Okuhara 21-19, 21-10 in a fast-paced 50-minute game to enter Friday's women's badminton final at the 2016 Rio Games. Assured of a silver medal, Sindhu is also the youngest Indian to win an Olympic medal.

On Wednesday, female wrestler Sakshi Malik ended India's medal drought at Rio: she picked up the bronze in the 58kg women's wrestling category, becoming the first Indian female wrestler and the fourth Indian woman to win an Olympic medal.

Last Sunday, Dipa Karmakar, India's first female gymnast at the Olympics, barely lost out a medal, finishing fourth in the women's vault gymnastics, and winning the hearts of a nation.

Creating history

In other, more modest achievements, long-distance runner Lalita Babar became the second Indian woman to qualify for the final of track and field event at Olympics, finishing 10th in the 3000m steeplechase final on Monday; and teenage golfer Aditi Ashok qualified for the final.

Image copyright AP

Kite flying seems like a harmless sport. But it can also be deadly - earlier this week, two children and a man were killed after their throats were slit by kite strings that had been coated with glass.

Kite flying is a popular sport in India and Pakistan. There was even a time when men fought brutal battles in the skies with their kites.

Image copyright Indian Air Force

On 22 July, an Indian military plane with 29 people on board, including six crew members, went missing over the Bay of Bengal.

More than three weeks and a massive search operation later, there is no trace of the plane.

Image copyright AP

"Don't make me a goddess. I am an ordinary woman with ordinary desires," Irom Sharmila, seen as the world's longest hunger striker, once told an associate.

"I want to eat good food, get married, want to have children. Please don't put me on a pedestal. I am just an ordinary person engaged in an extraordinary struggle."

Image copyright AFP

Will India, a $2 trillion (£1.5tn) economy with 1.3 billion consumers, now become a truly single market?

Many believe the landmark goods and services tax bill - passed by parliament on Wednesday evening, after years of filibustering by the ruling BJP and main opposition Congress - is a key step in that direction.

Image copyright AFP

Four years ago, a group of upper-caste men arrived at Mehul Vinodbhai Kabira's modest two-room home in Gujarat and threatened to burn it down.

Bhayla is a nondescript village of around 450 low slung brick-and-cement homes straddling a highway dotted by pharmaceutical, engineering and bio-tech factories.

Image copyright Hindustan Times

He won eight consecutive elections and spent more than 50 years in his Congress party before becoming the prime minister of India. A father of eight children, he spoke 10 languages, and was a proficient translator. He first travelled abroad when he was 53, mastered two computer languages and wrote computer code in his 60s.

That's not all. Before becoming 10th prime minister of a fractious democracy, PV Narasimha Rao campaigned in three languages, won from three states and was more connected to the grassroots than most modern-day Indian leaders. He also held a wide range of ministries - foreign, defence, home, education, health, law - with mixed results.

When security forces in Indian-administered Kashmir killed a prominent militant leader in a gunfight last week, they would have surely anticipated a civilian blowback in the Muslim-dominated valley.

After all, the young, social-media savvy Burhan Wani had become the mascot of a new generation of home-grown rebels fighting Indian rule in the region - there are close to 100 local militants in Kashmir today, four times as many as in 2011, Indian intelligence estimates. Wani's ability to "recruit [people] into militancy from the grave will far outstrip anything he could have done on social media," tweeted Kashmir's former chief minister and opposition leader Omar Abdullah after the killing.

Image copyright Dipankar

On Friday, 14 students in eastern India's Bihar who topped school examinations will face three teachers in an office in the state capital, Patna, to be retested.

The examiners will be checking the handwriting of the students and will be asking questions to find out whether they cheated in their examinations.

Image copyright Reuters

Two years after a historic drubbing in general elections, the 130-year-old Congress party is showing few signs of revival. On Thursday, the nightmare continued, with the party losing Assam and Kerala in crucial state elections.

Now the Congress rules in just six of India's 29 states - half of them tiny ones in the north-east - and supports a regional coalition in Bihar. Going by its performance in Tamil Nadu, it is taking a beating even as an alliance partner.