Winters in Delhi's Sangam Vihar area no longer come with just chill and fog. For Ranjeet, who has run a small furniture shop near CRO Chowk for the past 15 years, it has meant tightness in the chest, burning eyes, a scratchy throat and sinuses that refuse to clear. He has been breathing the same air for years. But this year, he says, it felt different — heavier, harder to breathe, and it began to affect his health.

A kilometre away, an AQI station insists the air is “moderate” at 150 for most of this winter. Yet the air in nearby residential pockets of Tughlakabad, Gupta Colony, Deoli and Sangam Vihar feels far worse.

India Today’s ground check at the Karni Singh Shooting Range AQI station reveals a monitor cut off from the zone it claims to represent — planted deep inside a forest-like

See Full Page