It was a warm Thursday in the middle of June. Richa stood with a pair of Nikon binoculars under a tall Semal tree at Delhi's Lodhi Garden, her eyes fixed on a small cavity inside the trunk, some 10 meters above the ground. A male Indian Grey Hornbill was perched on it. Soon, a chick peeked out of the cavity. It was feeding time.

Hornbills store food for their younglings in their throat. This includes eggs, figs, nuts, and insects. Perched outside the tiny cavity, the parent regurgitates food from its throat and uses its long beak to place it inside the hole, feeding its chicks.

Richa silently observed the parent hornbill feeding its chicks, relaying her observations through the binoculars to her son, Vidith, who stood beside her with a sheet of paper.

The two logged the time of feeding, which was around 6:30 in the morning, the number of regurgitations, the type of food, and the sex of the Indian Grey Hornbill parent.

What Richa and Vidith were observing was not neccessarily an unusual sight. Regular visitors often spot native grey hornbills in Lodhi Garden between March and August every year. The birds nest in some of the many mature trees of Seemal, Saptaparni, and Neem.

However, this hornbill is no ordinary one. The story that unfolded in Lodhi Garden this year offers another glimpse of how, in the face of urbanisation, city birds are finding refuge in public parks and urban forests and adapting to survive.

An Unusual Visitor Arrives at Lodhi Garden

There has indeed been an unusual addition to some of the Indian Grey Hornbills’ nests at Lodhi Garden this year.

In May, a gorgeous female Oriental Pied Hornbill, a species not native to Delhi, began frequenting the garden. The bulky black-and-white bird, with a chiselled yellow beak, was first spotted by frequent garden visitor Anuradha Mathur. The retired school principal-turned-birder saw the pied hornbill with two resident male Indian Grey Hornbills on 12 May.

Later, it became clear that the female pied hornbill was actually feeding the grey hornbill chicks. Birders affectionately named her ‘Mausi’.

In hornbills, the female seals herself inside a tree cavity to lay her eggs and incubate them. During this period, she temporarily sheds her flight feathers because she no longer needs to fly. The male alone forages for food for the female and, later, the chicks.

At Lodhi Garden, however, the opposite was happening: the female pied hornbill was foraging and feeding the chicks. It was a bizarre case—one that even experts struggled to fully explain.

Following the hornbill story, in June, the WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature) stepped in with an official monitoring programme to track the pied hornbill’s behaviour.

Richa and Vidith were among the dozens of citizen volunteers who became part of the programme. Volunteers monitored a few selected nests across Lodhi Garden where the pied hornbill visited. 

How City Birds are Adapting to Survive

In the early days of the WWF programme, birders were unsure whether the Oriental Pied Hornbill was simply feeding the chicks to fatten them up before eventually eating them.

The suspicion stemmed from a previous incident recorded along the Sirhind Canal in Punjab in 2021, where a pied hornbill first fed Indian Grey Hornbill chicks and later ate them.

At Lodhi Garden, however, the Oriental Pied Hornbill fed on eggs, insects and berries from banyan, peepal and other trees.

Finding food inside the sprawling, manicured Lodhi Garden is relatively easy. But the urban park is also home to several species of city birds, including Rose-ringed Parakeets, Black-rumped Flameback Woodpeckers, Common Mynas, Indian Spot-billed Ducks, Rock Pigeons, and tiny Jungle Babblers, many of which feed on berries.

So, despite the abundance of food, competition persists, and omnivorous birds have an advantage.

Nikhil Devasar, senior wildlife photographer, conservationist and founder of Delhibird Foundation, who has spent long hours photographing the pied hornbill at Lodhi Garden after it suddenly appeared in May this year, tells The Quint that since then, it has remained inside Lodhi Garden, with no instances of it eating the grey hornbill chicks.

“Birds inside cities have limited space to compete for nesting sites and food. They still survive and try to adapt, but their populations continue to decline," says Mayuri Jani, who works with migratory birds in Kutch, Gujarat.

Mayuri adds that some city bird species, such as mynas and babblers, have expanded their diets. “In Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar, birds feed on gathiya and roti.” This increases their chances of survival in metros.

How did the Oriental Pied Hornbill Survive in Delhi?

"The pied hornbill is suspected to have been kept in captivity, perhaps in an aviary, from which it probably escaped,” says Nikhil Devasar.

The Oriental Pied Hornbill’s prolonged stay made one thing clear: the vegetation in urban parks, along with their manmade water bodies, offers birds a preferable place to inhabit.

Besides, the capital is one of the few Indian cities with a relatively low-rise skyline and extensive green cover. Apart from the northern stretches of the Aravalli Ridge, urban parks such as Lodhi Garden, the Yamuna floodplains, and nearby birding hotspots like Sultanpur National Park together support Delhi’s diverse bird population.

Fittingly, for the resilient pied hornbill, adapting to the garden was hardly a challenge.

“Oriental Pied Hornbills are a very adaptable species… They’re found in villages, rural landscapes and semi-urban kinds of areas. They’re found in cities. There are lots of reports of the Oriental Pied Hornbill in Southeast Asia nesting in all kinds of, you know, clay jars and pots. They are also among the species that easily take to artificial nest boxes,” said Dr Aparajita Dutta during an online discussion on hornbills on 10 June, organised by Devasar’s Delhibird Foundation.

Dr Dutta has been studying the hornbills of northeastern India with local communities since the 1990s.

Indian Grey Hornbills are equally adaptable. At Aligarh Muslim University last year, researchers found hornbills nesting in non-native eucalyptus (safeda) and other non-indigenous trees on the campus.

The planting of non-native trees for aesthetic purposes has meant that hornbills have adapted to new kinds of nesting sites.

Urbanisation, on the other hand, has made habitat options increasingly limited. Hornbills also compete with other bird species, such as mynas, for nesting sites in the same area.

“Because of this interspecific competition and this urge to breed, I think the female (pied hornbill of Lodhi Garden) is defending that area and the nest cavity for any future opportunities to breed, even though she doesn’t have a partner,” said Dr Dutta, referring to the hornbill at Lodhi Garden.

The pied hornbill, it appears, wants to make Delhi’s Lodhi Garden its home.

Making Room for Birds in a Growing City

The hornbill saga at Lodhi Garden, as Delhi’s birding community calls it, brought attention to the city’s resident birds. In urban spaces, resilient bird species feed on anything, build nests from whatever they can find.

In a Times of India interview, Trevor Price, a Himalayan bird scholar, discussed how traffic has affected bird calls. Speaking about the capital, he said,

Traffic, pollution, competition for nesting spaces, processed food and cement are changing the habits of city birds, potentially disrupting the entire food chain.

“Birds help scatter seeds and control pests. A farm that naturally has a diverse variety of visiting bird species needs less fertiliser. Even inside cities, birds help control spiders and ants. If birds vanish, the population of pests will explode,” notes Mayuri Jani.

Over the years, interest in birdwatching has expanded across cities, despite being an expensive and time-consuming activity.

Birding looks at nature not merely as consumers, but as a thriving ecosystem in its own right. It helps us understand how humans can coexist and evolve alongside ecosystems, while encouraging an alternative idea of ‘sustainable development’.

The recently notified Delhi Master Plan 2047 allows vertical development, including a framework for buildings taller than 100 floors within the city. This is likely to affect the city’s skyline, which is currently conducive to bird survival.

“I find it personally stressful when ecological destruction takes place in the name of growth and beautification,” Richa said, adding:

Sharma serves as producer on the film, directed by Ambeicka Pandit (Black Warrant) and written by Amita Vyas. The world, atmosphere, and ‘vibe’ are immediately familiar, and not just because this is yet another moody crime drama—the staple genre of the streaming age.

Sharma’s worlds are meditative, bleak, and thematically rich in their fixation on the monsters among us and the conditions that birth them.

Officer Babita Singh AKA Baby (a terrific Nimisha Sajayan) is, in spirit, the rookie cousin of Paatal Lok’s Hathiram Chaudhary. Like him, she’s an underestimated, overlooked cop who’s determined and recklessly brave. Self-destructive as it may be, she isn’t capable of looking the other way or, as Hathiram would say, putting naukri over duty. But unlike the tired, jaded Hathiram, Babita is the wet-behind-the-ears junior officer at the very start of her career. This film is the origin story of her becoming.

When Baby is pushed to take the fall for a senior officer (a solid Rakesh Kumar), she accepts the two-week suspension. It’s the only way she’s able to get leave to visit her hometown of Rewa in Madhya Pradesh with her husband Sharad (Anshuman Pushkar can do no wrong). There, her childhood friend Bansi (a gentle Barun Sobti) says he urgently needs to speak to her. Before he gets the chance, the next day, he turns up dead.

A Solid Coming-of-Rage Story

Babita Singh Reporting works better as a coming-of-rage origin story than as a thoughtful crime drama. Adept as he is at them, crime and investigation narratives have always been secondary in Sharma’s worlds, merely a kind of narrative tax to get at something more primal about the dark heart of society. But here, the “crime half” of writer Amita Vyas’ script feels at times clunky and convenient. The more you interrogate the beats of the murder mystery, the less they hold up.

Instead, Babita Singh Reporting is powered by its endearing central character and an excellent Nimisha. She’s simply undeniable as one of the most “invisible” actors around. You can only ever see the character.

Not to mention director Ambeicka Pandit’s sophisticated, affecting aesthetic. Together with the DOP’s sumptuous frames and production designer Mukund Gupta’s keen detailing, public markets, seedy bylanes and cluttered homes are rendered cinematic.

It is curious, however, that visual flair aside, the setting doesn’t quite bleed into the narrative. The finest crime dramas ensure the place is inseparable from the plot. But this story feels like it could’ve taken place in any small town.

Female cop characters on streaming are routinely awarded domestic-vs-duty arcs, struggling to balance personal and professional lives while dealing with nagging mothers (Dahaad) or insensitive husbands (Delhi Crime). Baby is forced to contend with both.

She’s fat-shamed by her family. Her job, the fact that she hasn’t conceived yet and even her dead friend are treated as inconveniences by her in-laws. Not to mention her quietly manipulative husband. Anshuman Pushkar does well in a tricky balancing act as a man who knows how to perform “wokeness” and empathy while making his patriarchal demands of his wife known.

A Spiritual Sequel To 'The Great Indian Kitchen'

It’s why Babita Singh Reporting is a spiritual successor of sorts to The Great Indian Kitchen—Nimisha's breakout role in one of the most rightfully celebrated Indian films of the last decade. In that film, her newly married nameless character is treated like a robot, a slave, a piece of meat. Here, she plays a cop who’s constantly reminded she’s a woman first, belittled as a wife and daughter-in-law who must find her courage and embrace her rage and rebellion.

The weaving of her domestic duties and scrappy, DIY investigation works well. Baby keeps coming up with new errands and tasks to do for her in-laws to allow her the time and freedom to solve her friend’s murder. I also liked how the narrative balances her fear and determination. She routinely risks her life in finding the truth, at one point being chased out of a house by her friend’s abusive husband and his dogs.

Watch what Nimisha does in an excellent “fake it till you make it” sequence where she’s being mugged by a group of drug addicts she’s trying to question. She quickly snaps from scared victim to performed bravado, threatening them as they retreat in fear.

The problem is the design of the investigation itself, which relies on a few too many conveniences and coincidences.

Baby discovers Bansi is dead because his apparent killers are arrested right in front of her while she’s out shopping. After she attends the funeral and examines the body, her explanation to her husband that the police may have the wrong killer goes beyond organic and risks feeling overexplained. Many of the folks she has to interrogate who knew Bansi happen to be people she comes across.

A key suspect happens to be related to her in-laws, and so on. There’s also the matter of the final revelation of why and how Bansi was killed, which risks feeling like a cop-out (pun not intended).

Still, Babita Singh Reporting remains one of the better Hindi films of the year as a result of its craft and central character more than its narrative.

The internal journey here shines far brighter than the external plotting. While the film doesn’t quite join the ranks of the Hindi streaming crime drama hall of fame, its protagonist certainly does. If the algorithm permits, I for one would look forward to seeing more adventures of ASI Babita Singh.

Babita Singh Reporting releases on Prime Video on 28 August.

(Suchin Mehrotra is a critic and film journalist who covers Indian cinema for a range of publications. He's also the host of The Streaming Show podcast on his own YouTube channel. This is an opinion piece, and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)

वायरल हो रहा ग्राफिक

वायरल हो रहा वीडियो

वायरल वीडियो में क्या है ? : वायरल हो रहे 19 सेकंड के वीडियो में बोरिस जॉनसन पूर्व प्रधानमंत्री जवाहरलाल नेहरू से हुई बातचीत का जिक्र करते दिख रहे हैं. बोरिस ने बताया कि पंडित नेहरू ने उनसे कहा था कि भारत रूस के साथ रहेगा.

क्या दावा सच है ? : नहीं, सोशल मीडिया पर किया जा रहा ये दावा सच नहीं है कि बोरिस जॉनसन ने पूर्व प्रधानमंत्री जवाहर लाल नेहरू का जिक्र करते हुए नरेंद्र मोदी की आलोचना की.

• बोरिस जॉनसन ने यूनाइटेड किंगडम की पूर्व महारानी एलिजाबेथ द्वितीय के साथ प्रधानमंत्री नेहरू को लेकर हुई बातचीत का जिक्र जरूर किया था, लेकिन उन्होंने नेहरू की विदेश नीति की तुलना प्रधानमंत्री मोदी की विदेश नीति से नहीं की.

हमने ये सच कैसे पता लगाया ? : हमने वायरल वीडियो के कुछ फ्रेम्स का रिवर्स इमेज सर्च किया, जिसके जरिए हमें The Economic Times के YouTube चैनल पर इस बातचीत का पूरा वीडियो मिला.

• बोरिस जॉनसन 22 अगस्त 2026 को आयोजित The Economic Times World Leaders Forum 2026 में बोल रहे थे.

• वायरल वीडियो में दिख रहा हिस्सा इस पूरे वीडियो में 30 मिनट पर देखा जा सकता है. उस वक्त बोरिस जॉनसन रूस-यूक्रेन युद्ध के बारे में बात कर रहे थे.

• दिवंगत महारानी एलिजाबेथ द्वितीय के साथ हुई बातचीत को याद करते हुए जॉनसन ने कहा,

इसके बाद बोरिस जॉनसन ने इस बयान को लेकर अपनी प्रतिक्रिया और रूस-यूक्रेन युद्ध के संभावित अंत को लेकर कुछ बातें कहीं,

क्या उन्होंने पीएम मोदी की आलोचना की?: नहीं. पूरी बातचीत के दौरान जॉनसन ने कहीं भी पीएम मोदी के बारे में आलोचनात्मक या नकारात्मक टिप्पणी नहीं की.

उन्होंने पीएम मोदी का जिक्र केवल दो बार किया. पहली बार उन्होंने एक दिन पहले दिए गए पीएम मोदी के भाषण का जिक्र करते हुए उसे “शानदार” बताया और दूसरी बार अमेरिकी राष्ट्रपति डोनाल्ड ट्रंप के संदर्भ में पीएम मोदी का उल्लेख किया.

निष्कर्ष: एक एडिटेड वीडियो को इस गलत दावे के साथ शेयर किया जा रहा है कि पूर्व ब्रिटिश प्रधानमंत्री बोरिस जॉनसन ने पूर्व प्रधानमंत्री जवाहरलाल नेहरू की तारीफ करते हुए पीएम मोदी की विदेश नीति की आलोचना की.

(अगर आपके पास भी ऐसी कोई जानकारी आती है, जिसके सच होने पर आपको शक है, तो पड़ताल के लिए हमारे वॉट्सऐप नंबर  9540511818 या फिर मेल आइडी webqoof@thequint.com पर भेजें. सच हम आपको बताएंगे. हमारी बाकी फैक्ट चेक स्टोरीज आप यहां पढ़ सकते हैं.)

वीडियो में क्या है? वायरल हो रहे वीडियो में राहुल गांधी कथित तौर पर कहते दिख रहे हैं, “80% रेप महिलाओं की वजह से होते हैं. रेप इंडिया में होता है, और भारत में रेप नहीं होता है. लड़की की एक ही जगह होती है, उसे पिंजरे में बंद करके रखना चाहिए. उसे कंट्रोल में रखना चाहिए. उसे काम नहीं करना चाहिए और लड़कों को पूरी आजादी होनी चाहिए.”

क्या यह सच है?: नहीं, वायरल वीडियो एडिट किया गया है. वीडियो के पूरे वर्जन में राहुल गांधी ये रूढ़िवादी और महिला-विरोधी बातें खुद नहीं कह रहे हैं, बल्कि अन्य नेताओं के बयानों के तौर पर बता रहे हैं.

हमने ये सच कैसे पता लगाया?: हमने वायरल वीडियो के कुछ फ्रेम्स का Google Lens की मदद से रिवर्स इमेज सर्च किया. इस दौरान हमें इसी कार्यक्रम के राहुल गांधी के विजुअल्स वाली कई रिपोर्ट्स मिलीं.

• इन रिपोर्ट्स से पता चला कि वायरल वीडियो राहुल गांधी के 22 अगस्त 2026 को महाराष्ट्र के पुणे में हुए ‘छात्रों की गूंज’ कार्यक्रम का है.

• हमें इंडियन नेशनल कांग्रेस (INC) के आधिकारिक YouTube चैनल पर अपलोड किया गया इस कार्यक्रम का पूरा वीडियो मिला.

• वायरल वीडियो में किए गए दावों से जुड़े बयान इस वीडियो में करीब 52:12 मिनट पर सुने जा सकते हैं.

• हालांकि, कार्यक्रम के पूरे वीडियो में राहुल गांधी को यह कहते हुए सुना जा सकता है, “मोहन भागवत कहते हैं, ‘रेप इंडिया में होता है और भारत में नहीं होता.’खट्टर जी कहते हैं, 80% रेप महिलाओं की वजह से होते हैं. तो ये एक मानसिकता है और लड़ाई इसी मानसिकता के खिलाफ है. मानसिकता ये है कि लड़की की एक ही जगह होती है, उसे पिंजरे में बंद करके रखना चाहिए. उसे कंट्रोल में रखना चाहिए. उसे काम नहीं करना चाहिए और लड़कों को पूरी आजादी होनी चाहिए.”

निष्कर्ष : साफ है कि राहुल गांधी के बयान को एडिट कर उसे गलत संदर्भ में शेयर किया जा रहा है.

(अगर आपके पास भी ऐसी कोई जानकारी आती है, जिसके सच होने पर आपको शक है, तो पड़ताल के लिए हमारे वॉट्सऐप नंबर  9540511818 या फिर मेल आइडी webqoof@thequint.com पर भेजें. सच हम आपको बताएंगे. हमारी बाकी फैक्ट चेक स्टोरीज आप यहां पढ़ सकते हैं.)