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It is 2am in the obstetrics and gynaecology emergency department of Assahaba Medical Complex in Gaza City. Through the open windows, I can hear the never-ending hum of drones in the sky above, but aside from that, it is quiet. A breeze flows through the empty hall, granting relief from the heat, and a soft blue glow emanates from the few lights that are on. I am six months into a yearlong internship and 12 hours into a 16-hour shift. I am so tired that I could fall asleep here at the admissions desk, but in the calm, a rare sense of peace envelopes me.

It is soon shattered by a woman crying in pain. She is bleeding and gripped by cramps. We examine her and tell her that she has lost her unborn baby – the child she has dreamed of meeting. The woman was newly married, but just a month after her wedding, her husband was killed in an air raid. The child she was carrying – a 10-week-old embryo – was their first and will be their last.

Her face is pale, as though her blood has frozen with the shock. There is anguish, denial, and screams. Her screams draw the attention of others, who gather around her as she falls to the ground. We revive her, only to return her to her suffering. But now she is silent – there are no cries, no expression. Having lost her husband, she now endures the pain of losing what she hoped would be a living memory of him.

Life insists on arriving

It is my sixth night shift in obstetrics and gynaecology. I am supposed to rotate through other departments – spending two months in each – but I have already decided to become a gynaecologist during this rotation. Being in this ward brings joy to my life – it is where life begins, and it teaches me that hope is present regardless of the terrible things we are enduring.

Giving birth in a war zone – amid bombing, hunger, and fear – means life and death coexist. Sometimes, I still struggle to understand how life insists on arriving in this place surrounded by death.

It amazes me that mothers continue to bring children into a world in which survival feels uncertain. If the bombings don’t take us, hunger might. But what surprises me most is the resilience and patience of my people. They believe their children will live on to carry an important message: That no matter how many you have killed, Gaza responds by refusing to be erased.

Childbirth is far from easy. It is physically and emotionally exhausting, and mothers in Gaza endure excruciating pain without access to basic pain relief. Since March, the hospital has seen a severe shortage of basic supplies, including pain relief medication and anaesthetics. When they cry out as I stitch their tear wounds without anaesthesia, I feel helpless, but I try to distract them by telling them how beautiful their babies are and reassuring them that they have gotten through the hardest part.

With constant hunger here, many pregnant women are fatigued and do not gain enough weight during pregnancy. When the time comes to deliver, they are exhausted even before they begin to push. As a result, their labour can be prolonged, which means more pain for the mother. If a baby’s heartbeat slows, she might need an emergency Cesarean section.

Practicing medicine here is far from ideal. Hospitals are overwhelmed, and resources are severely limited. We’re constantly battling shortages of medical supplies. On every night shift, I work with one gynaecologist, three nurses and three midwives. I usually deal with the easier tasks, such as assessing conditions, suturing small tear wounds, and assisting with normal deliveries. A gynaecologist takes the more complicated cases, and a surgeon performs the elective and emergency Caesarean sections.

The surgeon always reminds us to minimise the consumption of gauze and sutures as much as possible, and to save them for the next patient who may arrive in desperate need. I try to discard and replace gauze only after it is completely saturated with blood.

Power outages make things even more difficult. The electricity cuts out several times a day, plunging the delivery room into darkness. In those moments, we have no choice but to switch on our phone flashlights to guide our hands.

During a recent shift, the electricity went out for nearly 10 minutes after a baby was born. The mother’s placenta hadn’t been delivered yet, so we used our phone lights to help her.

Many of the best medical professionals in Gaza have been killed, like Dr Basel Mahdi and his brother, Dr Raed Mahdi, both gynaecologists. They were killed while on duty at Mahdi Maternity Hospital in November 2023. Countless others have fled Gaza.

Most of the time, the doctors around me are too overworked to offer guidance or teach me the practical skills I had hoped to learn, though they try their best.

Still, some moments pierce through the exhaustion and remind me why I chose this path in the first place. These encounters stay with me longer than any lecture or textbook could.

At dawn, a new baby

During one shift, a pregnant woman came in for a routine check-up, accompanied by her five-year-old daughter, whose smile lit up the room. She had come to learn the baby’s gender.

As I prepared the ultrasound, I turned and playfully asked the little girl, “Do you want it to be a boy or a girl?”

Without hesitation, she said, “A boy.”

Surprised by her certainty, I gently asked why. Before she could respond, her mother quietly explained. “She doesn’t want a girl. She’s afraid she’ll lose her – like she lost her older sister, who was killed in this latest attack.”

Another day, a woman in her tenth week of pregnancy came to the obstetrics clinic after being told by a doctor that her baby’s heart was not beating. As I performed an ultrasound to check the fetus, to my surprise and relief, I detected a heartbeat.

The woman cried with joy. On that day, I witnessed life where it was thought to have been lost.

Tragedy touches every part of our lives in Gaza. It is woven into our most intimate moments, even around the joy of expecting a new life. Safety is a luxury we’ve never known.

At 6am, as dawn breaks on the morning of my shift, we welcome a new baby born to a mother from the Jabalia camp in northern Gaza, an area surrounded by Israeli soldiers and tanks. As the first rays of sunlight pierce the delivery room, the mother cries happy tears, her face flushed as she hugs her baby girl.

New Delhi, India – What if Michael had died instead of Sonny in The Godfather? Or if Rose had shared the debris plank, and Jack hadn’t been left to freeze in the Atlantic in Titanic*?

Eros International, one of India’s largest production houses, with more than 4,000 films in its catalogue, has decided to explore this sort of what-if scenario. It has re-released one of its major hits, Raanjhanaa, a 2013 romantic drama, in cinemas – but has used artificial intelligence (AI) to change its tragic end, in which the male lead dies.

In the AI-altered version, Kundan (played by popular actor Dhanush), a Hindu man who has a doomed romance with a Muslim woman, lives. But the film’s director, Aanand L Rai, is furious.

“The idea that our work can be taken and modified by a machine, then dressed up as innovation, is deeply disrespectful,” Rai said, adding that the entire film crew had been kept in the dark about the re-release.

“What makes it worse is the complete ease and casualness with which it’s been done,” said Rai. “It is a reckless takeover that strips the work of its intent, its context, and its soul.”

This is the first time a film studio has re-released a movie with AI alterations, anywhere in the world, and it has also caused an uproar among critics, filmmakers and film lovers.

Here is what we know so far about why this move has been so controversial, and what the legal and ethical issues are.

How has the film been altered?

Eros International, a prominent film studio, has re-released a Tamil-dubbed version of the film, Raanjhanaa, titled Ambikapathy, with an alternate, AI-generated ending.

This altered version, which significantly deviates from the original film’s climax, screened at cinemas in Tamil Nadu, a southern Indian state, on August 1.

At the end of the original movie, the lead male character, Kundan, lies dead, covered in bruises from his injuries, in a hospital with his lover sitting by his side, crying. In the AI-altered ending, however, Kundan does not die. Instead, he opens his eyes and starts to stand up.

How have people reacted to the re-release?

The release of the AI-altered version prompted immediate objections from the film’s original creators. Dhanush, a Tamil actor, issued a statement noting that “this alternate ending stripped the film of its soul” and that the re-release had “completely disturbed” him.

With its changed ending, Ranjhaanna is “not the film I committed to 12 years ago”, he said. The actor added that the use of AI to alter films “is a deeply concerning precedent for both art and artists [that] threatens the integrity of storytelling and the legacy of cinema”.

Rai, the director, shared a detailed note on Instagram condemning the move. “Let me say this as clearly as I can: I do not support or endorse the AI-altered version … It is unauthorised. And whatever it claims to be, it is not the film we intended, or made.”

“This was never just a film to us. It was shaped by human hands, human flaws, and human feeling,” Rai added. “To cloak a film’s emotional legacy in a synthetic cape without consent is not a creative act. It’s an abject betrayal of everything we built.”

Richard Allen, professor of film and media art at City University of Hong Kong, said it seems inevitable that AI-altering will become a mainstream method of filmmaking in global film industries.

“If producers think they can make more money out of old content by using AI, they will do so,” Allen told Al Jazeera.

Is AI-altering legal?

Rai has said that he is investigating legal options to challenge the re-release of this movie.

Eros International insists that its actions are perfectly legal, however, and has refused to retract the re-release.

“This re-release is not a replacement – it is a creative reinterpretation, clearly labelled and transparently positioned,” said Pradeep Dwivedi, chief executive of Eros International Media.

Dwivedi noted that under Indian copyright law, the producer of a film (in this case, Eros International) is deemed its author and primary rights-holder, meaning that the production house is the first owner of copyright for the film.

He said the film studio is “the exclusive producer and copyright holder, holds full legal and moral rights” under Indian laws. He described the alternate ending to the movie as “a new emotional lens to today’s audiences”.

The studio, which has released more than 4,000 movies globally, will “embrace generative AI as the next frontier in responsible storytelling”, Dwivedi said, adding that Eros International is “uniquely positioned to bridge cinematic legacy with future-ready formats”.

What about the ethics of this?

Mayank Shekhar, an Indian film critic, said the real issue with AI-altering is one of ethics: doing it without the expressed consent of the creators – writer, director and actors – involved.

“What’s left then is simply the legalese of who owns the copyright, or who paid for the product, and is hence the sole producer, and therefore the owner of the work,” Shekhar said. “Technically, I suppose, or so it seems, what Eros has done isn’t illegal – it’s certainly unethical.”

In his statement, Eros International’s Dwivedi said that every era of cinema has faced the clash between “Luddites and Progressives”. He added: “When sound replaced silence, when colour replaced black-and-white, when digital challenged celluloid, and now, when AI meets narrative.”

Dwivedi insisted that reimagining the movie’s ending was not “artificial storytelling,” but “augmented storytelling, a wave of the future”.

Has AI been used to alter films before?

AI has not been used to alter the storyline of an existing movie by its own producers or crew for re-release before this.

However, it has been used for post-production purposes in movies – such as voice dubbing or computer-generated imagery (CGI) enhancements. Its use was a flashpoint in Hollywood during the labour protests of 2023, which resulted in new guidelines for the use of the technology.

In an interview, The Brutalist’s Oscar-nominated editor, David Jancso, said that the production had used a Ukrainian software company, Respeecher, to make the lead actors, Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones, sound more “authentic” when they spoke Hungarian in the film.

Similarly, filmmaker David Fincher supervised a 4K restoration of his celebrated crime-thriller, “Se7en” for its 30th anniversary this year, using AI to correct technical flaws in focus and colour.

Ted Sarandos, Netflix’s co-CEO, said last month that the company had used generative AI to produce visual effects for the first time on screen in its original series, El Eternauta, or The Eternaut. Netflix has also been exploring the use of trailers personalised for subscribers’ user profiles.

Reuters reported that Netflix had also tested AI to synchronise actors’ lip movements with dubbed dialogue to “improve the viewing experience”, quoting company sources.

Will AI alterations become the norm in cinema?

Allen said the alteration to Raanjhanaa felt different from the way AI has been used to enhance movies in the past. “There are so many things that AI doctoring might do to a movie,” he said.

However, he added: “We won’t necessarily lose sight of the definitive version, unless newly released versions are mislabelled as restorations or original versions of the movies themselves, which goes back to the ethical frameworks.”

Shekhar said: “The larger issue is simply of regulation. AI is too new for laws to catch up yet.

“The fact is, a work of art ought to be protected from predators. And respected for its own worth, whether or not somebody likes the ending of a film!”

An alternative ending to a film also needs to be plausible.

In 2022, Titanic director James Cameron said he commissioned a forensic analysis, involving a hypothermia expert, that proved there would have been no way for both Jack and Rose to survive on that infamous floating door. Jack “had to die”, Cameron said then.

On a crisp spring morning in Brampton town of Canada’s Ontario province in May, Harjit Singh Dhadda meticulously tied his traditional sage green turban as he got ready for work.

He embraced his daughter Gurleen before leaving for his trucking insurance office in Mississauga near Toronto’s bustling Pearson international airport.

It was the last time Gurleen saw her 51-year-old father alive. As Harjit reached the car park of his office on May 14, two men confronted him. One of them pumped multiple bullets into Harjit’s body before fleeing in a stolen 2018 Dodge Challenger.

Harjit later died of his injuries at a local hospital.

Hours later, two men claimed responsibility for Harjit’s murder in a Facebook post, calling themselves members of a criminal gang led by Lawrence Bishnoi, an Indian national currently imprisoned at Sabarmati Central Jail in the western Indian state of Gujarat.

Barely a month after Harjit’s murder, a businessman in Surrey, British Columbia, and another in Harjit’s town, Brampton – both of Indian origin – were shot. Local authorities say the murders represent a disturbing expansion of criminal networks rooted in India into Canadian territory – led by India’s most notorious organised crime syndicate, the Lawrence Bishnoi gang.

Now, a growing number of political leaders in Canada want the federal government to act, demanding that the Bishnoi gang be declared a terrorist organisation.

‘Public safety must come first’

“The terrorist designation enables police to use the necessary tools to investigate and bring this activity to an end. It gives police significant investigative tools,” British Columbia’s Premier David Eby said in a statement on June 17.

In July, his Alberta counterpart, Daniel Smith, echoed that call. “Formally designating the Bishnoi Gang as a terrorist entity will unlock critical powers, allowing law enforcement agencies to access the necessary tools and resources needed to disrupt operations and protect our people effectively,” Smith said in a Facebook post on July 14.

Alberta’s Public Safety Minister Mike Ellis said there was credible intelligence indicating the involvement of the Bishnoi gang in extortion and targeted violence in the province and elsewhere in Canada. “The gang originates from India, and ongoing investigations are examining why they are specifically targeting the South Asian community,” Ellis told Al Jazeera in a statement.

Jody Toor, a lawmaker from the Conservative Party in the British Columbia Legislature, and Brampton city Mayor Patrick Brown have also supported designating the Bishnoi gang a terrorist organisation.

The Canadian federal government has suggested that it is examining these demands. “There is precedent for criminal organisations being designated this way, and I fully support a thorough, evidence-based approach,” Secretary of State for Combating Crime Ruby Sahota told Al Jazeera. “Public safety must come first, and if a group meets the criteria, it should be listed without delay.”

Amarnath Amarasingam, a researcher on extremism and an associate professor at Queen’s University in Ontario, said that listing the Bishnoi group as a terrorist organisation would significantly broaden law enforcement powers. It would allow law enforcement agencies to pursue terrorism-related charges, criminalise recruitment or financial support for the group, seize and freeze assets, and give them greater surveillance powers.

Canadian officials had, in 2024, accused the Bishnoi gang of acting at the behest of Indian intelligence agencies to target critics of the Indian government on their soil.

“A terrorist designation would send a strong signal to India and other allies that Canada is taking the transnational threat seriously. It would also increase information-sharing opportunities with global partners,” Amarasingam told Al Jazeera. Those partners include the Five Eyes alliance, which also includes the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand.

A terrorist tag could strengthen Canadian requests for arrests through organisations like Interpol, too, he added. It could trigger sanctions against the gang, allowing the government to institute travel bans, visa denials and financial blacklisting of associates and funders.

But he warned that listing the group as a terrorist organisation could have its downsides. While clearly involved in criminal activity, the Bishnoi gang doesn’t appear to have political, religious or ideological objectives – traditionally the bar that listings have needed – he said.

“Using terrorism powers to target a group that lacks this motivation could set a dangerous precedent, weakening the credibility of Canada’s listing process and lowering the threshold, opening the door for future political misuse,” Amarasingam said.

An Indian intelligence asset?

But the Bishnoi gang is no ordinary criminal syndicate, according to Canadian officials.

In recent years, the Indian government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi has faced allegations that its intelligence agents have been attempting to carry out targeted assassinations of Sikh separatists overseas, especially in Canada and the US.

Canada is home to about 770,000 Sikhs, who make up 2.1 percent of its population – their largest number outside India. Many of them moved to Canada in the 1980s when Indian forces launched a violent crackdown on alleged supporters of a movement demanding a separate Sikh homeland, Khalistan, to be carved out of the northern Indian state of Punjab. India describes such separatists as “terrorists”.

It was the killing of Sikh separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar, 45, outside a Sikh temple on June 18, 2023, that pushed Bishnoi and his gang to the centre of a bitter diplomatic war between Canada and India.

In October that year, then Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau alleged that Indian diplomats were collecting intelligence on “Canadians who are opponents or in disagreement with the Modi government” and that the intelligence reached “criminal organisations like the Lawrence Bishnoi gang to then result in violence against Canadians on the ground”.

Trudeau and his government directly blamed the Modi government for Nijjar’s assassination. Nijjar was a prominent supporter of a Khalistani state.

But New Delhi, while rejecting these allegations, has insisted that it has sent more than two dozen extradition requests to Canada, seeking Ottawa’s help in getting Bishnoi gang members back to India to face “due legal action”. And it says that Canada hasn’t acted on its request.

As Canada and India trade allegations, many in the Indian origin community are dealing with mounting insecurity. Could they be the next target of the Bishnoi group?

‘Threatening call’

Over three decades, Harjit, a Sikh entrepreneur, had built a life that resembled a Canadian immigrant success story.

He ran a company called G&G Trucking Solutions – a consultancy firm that advised its clients on how to start and run a trucking company, and was a commercial insurance broker as well. His business expanded to Calgary and Edmonton, in Alberta, and he had nearly 30 employees.

Then, on December 10, 2023 – his birthday – he received a phone call from someone who identified himself as an Indian gangster, his daughter Gurleen recalled. The caller demanded 500,000 Canadian dollars ($361,000) in extortion money and threatened dire consequences if the money wasn’t paid. Harjit refused to pay and informed law enforcement authorities.

“He told me about the threatening call,” Gurleen, a 24-year-old business student at York University in Toronto, told Al Jazeera.

After the threatening call, Harjit changed his daily routine and began operating his business mostly from home. But eventually, he resumed meetings with clients in his office, his daughter said.

On May 14, Gurleen received a call from her father’s office. He had been shot.

“I rushed to the office. There were bullet casings scattered everywhere. Police had cordoned off the entire area. My father was rushed to the hospital, he later succumbed to his injuries,” said Gurleen.

Police have arrested three men – identified as Aman and Digvijay, both 21, and Shaheel, 22 – as suspects. But Harjit’s family says law enforcement have only scratched the tip of the iceberg.

“Police merely arrested three kids. But who orchestrated this? I wanted to know the man behind my father’s killing,” said Gurleen.

Meanwhile, two men – Rohit Godara and Goldy Brar – who called themselves members of the Bishnoi gang, posted on Facebook that they had killed Harjit. They claimed that Harjit had helped a rival gang and was involved in a murder in India – allegations that the family denies. Police have not confirmed whether they believe the Bishnoi gang was behind Harjit’s killing.

On June 12, 2025, another Indian-origin businessman, Satwinder Sharma, was shot in Surrey, British Columbia. An Indian origin gangster, Jiwan Fauji claimed responsibility for the murder. Indian police have labelled Fauji an alleged member of Babbar Khalsa International, a banned Khalistani outfit. Sharma’s family did not respond to an Al Jazeera request for an interview.

A little over a week later, on June 20, Brampton-based businessman, MP Dhanoa, was shot down. Again, Godara and Brar claimed responsibility on behalf of the Bishnoi gang in a Facebook post.

Harjit, Sharma and Dhanoa have no known links to the Khalistani movement.

But gang leader Lawrence Bishnoi, apart from his crime network, has presented himself as a Hindu nationalist in interviews from jail, and some supporters of Modi’s Hindu majoritarian Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government have spoken of how the gangster had scared Khalistan supporters.

Rise to notoriety

Indian police officials say that Bishnoi, 32, controls more than 700 sharpshooters who carry out murders and extortion globally. And he does this from behind bars, shuffling between various prisons for nearly a decade now.

Bishnoi and Brar gained wide notoriety in May 2022, when the gang murdered prominent Punjabi singer and rapper Sidhu Moosewala in Punjab. Police said Brar allegedly orchestrated Moosewala’s killing from Canada.

Ajai Sahni, executive director of the New Delhi Institute for Conflict Management, said establishing a command chain – and even defining what constitutes a gang – isn’t easy with transnational groups. “Any incident executed in India can be claimed by Bishnoi gang members in Canada or in the US, and vice versa through unverifiable social media accounts,” Sahni told Al Jazeera. He suggested that in such cases, even surveillance records against suspects might not suffice as strong enough legal evidence.

Sanjay Verma, former Indian high commissioner – Canada expelled him after Trudeau’s allegations in 2023 – said last year that India had shared information about Brar’s presence in Canada with Ottawa.

In 2024, Bishnoi’s gang claimed responsibility for the murder of a 66-year-old politician, Baba Siddique, in Mumbai’s Bandra area. Two members of the Bishnoi gang were also arrested for firing outside the Mumbai residence of popular Bollywood actor, Salman Khan.

Gurmeet Singh Chauhan, deputy inspector general of the Anti-Gangster Task Force in India’s Punjab, advocates for a joint data-sharing mechanism between countries affected by criminal gangs, like Bishnoi.

“If we have any evidence, it should be promptly shared with our Canadian counterparts, who must investigate it without delay and keep us informed. Crime is crime – no matter where it occurs in the world,” Chauhan told Al Jazeera. “There is a very thin line between organised crime and terrorism. These networks can be exploited for terrorist activities at any time, anywhere in the world.”

The Bishnoi group has also claimed responsibility for attacks on the homes of two prominent Punjabi singers, AP Dhillon and Gippy Grewal, in British Columbia, over the past two years, as its empire of fear has expanded from Mumbai to Mississauga. And on August 7, an alleged Bishnoi gang member claimed responsibility for gunshots fired at a cafe in British Columbia owned by Indian comedian Kapil Sharma.

‘They could execute me’

Satish Kumar, a 73-year-old businessman in Surrey, British Columbia who migrated to Canada 45 years ago, says he lives in constant fear.

Kumar is the president of Lakshmi Narayan Temple in Surrey, a prominent religious site for Hindus.

Earlier this year, he received a phone call from a man who identified himself as Godara, the Bishnoi associate who – along with Brar – claimed responsibility for the killings of Harjit and Dhanoa. “He demanded two million Canadian dollars [$1.45m] as extortion,” Kumar told Al Jazeera, adding that he blocked the number.

Later he reported the call to the police, after receiving threats from other numbers. “They sent multiple voice notes on May 28, 2025, threatening to kill me and harm my business premises, but I blocked the numbers”, said Kumar.

Then, the threats turned to bullets.

On June 7, men allegedly belonging to the Bishnoi gang fired shots at various buildings owned by Kumar. “The gang members filmed the shootings at three of my premises and sent me the footage, but I refused to pay extortion,” he said.

Kumar said he was frustrated with what he called an “inadequate response” by the Canadian police. “They [gangsters] could execute me at any moment. I still receive calls from them. My family is under constant stress,” he told Al Jazeera.

As attacks escalate, the South Asian community in Surrey and Brampton has been campaigning for more safety on social media, uploading videos of various shootings in the two cities. Since 2003, gang-related homicides in British Columbia have climbed from 21 percent to 46 percent of all homicides in 2023, according to the provincial police.