An Indian man who confessed to killing his girlfriend live on TV was arrested at the studio after staff called the police. Maninder Singh, 27, went to the News18 office in the northern city of Chandigarh and told a cameraman he wanted to “confess”. Staff then took him into the studio and broadcast his “confession”. The incident, which some compared to a pivotal scene from the film Joker, has raised issues around media ethics.

Mr Singh told the presenter of the show that he killed Sarbjit Kaur because “marriage talks” with her family had broken down. He added that he had come to “confess” because the police had been harassing his family ever since Miss Kaur’s body was found on 30 December in a hotel that the couple had checked into.

He had been on the run since. “He wanted publicity and sympathy, and also hoped that some lawyer would take up his case as he had no money to engage a lawyer,” Chandigarh police official Neha Yadav told BBC Punjabi’s Arvind Chhabra.