Truth vs Hype

India's new child labour law is meant to strengthen laws against exploitation of children. But there are worries that it legalises child labour by allowing children to work alongside their families. We travel to the industrial belt along the Delhi-Haryana border to see first-hand the impact of the new bill on the ground - from cramped workshops inside homes, to illegal, informal industrial units that employ 8-year-olds. Our investigation seeks to ask: has parliament made India's children safer or more vulnerable?

Towards the end of June, seven men from Hyderabad were arrested on charges that they were part of an ISIS plot to stage attacks in India. Statements of five of these seven men, accessed exclusively by NDTV, throw up new and disturbing aspects of the reach of the terror group Islamic State in India - from how it recruits, how it ensures an oath of allegiance and how it supplies weapons. Families of these men have rebutted the NIA's charges, but investigators claim they have enough evidence to back these statements. Claims will now be tested in court. We show this with a rider: statements made in police custody do not have value as evidence.

The video of Dalit men flogged by cattle vigilantes in Gujarat has turned attention once again on the violent, and divisive methods used by gau rakshaks or self-styled cow vigilantes across the country. They claim to be acting as defenders of the holy cow. On Truth vs Hype this week, we expose how that rhetoric is often a mask for extortion, bribe-taking and using vigilantism to support a thriving network of cattle shelters. We go undercover with a cattle truck, that is attacked by gau-rakshaks to find how their thuggery has the tacit support of the police.

This week Truth vs Hype travels to Doha, Qatar for an exclusive interview with one of the most wanted men in the world - Khaled Mashal, the head of Hamas. Hamas is one of the most important political authorities in the Gaza strip but also designated as a terror outfit by the US, EU and Israel. The atrocities of ISIS may have eclipsed Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but that is key to Middle East peace so it's important to hear the Hamas leader on whether his hardline group will be enablers or a stumbling block to peace.

India's garment industry is one of the biggest in the world, employing millions, especially women. They are the invisible hands behind some of the biggest global clothing brands, and India sees garments as a key driver of growth. But there is a darker side to this. New reports suggest women garment workers have to endure a pervasive culture of sexual propositioning, abuse, even rape. We spoke to women workers in the major garment hubs of Gurgaon and Bangalore to understand how widespread is the taint of sexual harassment. And whether the new tougher laws against sexual harassment has filtered into their workplaces. For their answers, and the responses to our investigation from export houses, global brands, and the government, tune into Truth vs Hype.

As prices of food staples continue to rise, particularly those of dal and tomatoes, the government is, as always, quick to blame poor weather for the crisis. On Truth vs Hype, we find the reality is much more complex. The government's own data shows a glut, not a shortage of tomatoes, in the market. So why are prices rising? As for dal, is the shortage because of drought, or a drought of policy decisions? The country's food minister also joins us to take tough questions on the many of the myths surrounding high prices.

With Tamil Nadu recently joining the string of states imposing a partial or full ban on alcohol, we interrogate the arguments made in favour of Prohibition: does it reduce domestic violence? Make cities safer for women? Remove social ills? Or is the reality more nuanced than the political slogans?

Of all the dramatic outcomes from this week's election results, the most startling was the return of Jayalalithaa in Tamil Nadu. We sift through the data and travel to the ground to decode the multiple factors that led to the Amma's comeback, and what it means to Tamil Nadu politics.

The cold-blooded killing of a teenager in Bihar's town of Gaya by the son of a politician made national headlines, harking back to the state's lawless past. As BJP and Nitish Kumar clash on whether Bihar is entering Jungle Raj 2.0, we use the Aditya Sachdeva murder as a starting point to look deeper at the nature of the problem. Is Bihar in midst of a crime wave, or is this more the worrying rise of political dadagiri which the new government is unable to contain?

This week we travelled to Bangladesh, which is seeing a unstoppable purge of anyone perceived as blasphemous by Islamist vigilantes. The scope of those being murdered has expanded - from secular blogwriters to professors, to gay activists, to the country's Hindus. We question whether the Sheikh Hasina government's claims of crackdown on extremists is genuine, or is it just to settle political scores. We probe Bangladesh's death squads: freelancers, local outfits - as the government suggests - or part of turf wars between global jihadists? And we travel north of Dhaka, where the tragic murder of a Hindu tailor has exposed the frailties in the country's attempt to rein in violence.