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In this edition of Statecraft, the United Nations Security Council report attributes the November 2025 Red Fort blast in Delhi to Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS).
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00:08What happens when a 210-year-old treaty becomes the centre of a modern border fight
00:14and while one country searches its archives, another is looking north for a new trade route?
00:20Tonight, two stories about the power of history, geography and strategic timing.
00:25Nepal may have lost the original Sughali Treaty, but has it really lost the case?
00:29Or is the missing paper just exposing a much bigger fight over maps, rivers and evidence?
00:36And then, from the Himalayas, shift your gaze to the Arctic.
00:40Russia wants India aboard the Northern Sea Route, a frozen corridor that could reshape energy, trade and geopolitics.
00:48One country is fighting over where a border begins.
00:51The other is preparing for where the next global trade route could end.
00:55Hello and welcome. You're watching Statecraft with me, Geeta Mohan.
00:59All this and more, but first up, the headlines.
01:03Amid talks of the secretive escape of President Trump in a decoy plane, a fresh revelation has startled many.
01:09Reports suggest Secretary of War Pete Hexet, along with some Trump's close aides, accompanied him,
01:14while Marco Rubio, Scott Besant and Stephen Miller stayed on the larger plane.
01:19Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Britain as the Islamic Republic of Britain,
01:24while drawing a comparison between the UK and Iran over the issue of nuclear weapons.
01:28It comes amid heightened tension in West Asia and Israel's demand for absolute obliteration of Iran's nuclear programs and missiles.
01:35Former Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji died at the age of 98 in Beijing.
01:40Zhu served as the Premier of China for one term from 1998 to 2003.
01:45His time in office coincided with China's period of double-digit economic growth.
01:50A senior advisor to the commander of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or the IRGC, said Tehran could deliberately prolong
01:58its war with the US
01:59until President Trump leaves office, using attrition to deter future attacks.
02:04Speaking to PBS NewsHour, Mohamed Reza Nakhdi said, and I quote,
02:09One way is to prolong this war until we get to the next term of the presidency and cause attrition,
02:14so that if anyone else wants to attack Iran, they will know there is a cost.
02:19He also added that Iran is currently winning the war, but has not yet achieved its final objective.
02:25Nakhdi said prolonging the conflict will give Iran more experience in fighting the US
02:30and impose a cost that could serve as a deterrent against future attacks.
02:35He stressed that Iran's goal is to establish deterrents so that no one dares any future attack on the Islamic
02:41country.
02:42Nakhdi also warned that Iran continues to produce more missiles as compared to the number of times they launched.
02:48He claimed Iran is capable of manufacturing missiles in different locations and launching them if the war lasted for years.
02:58Whenever the situation demands and the order is issued,
03:01we must be capable of extending operations into enemy territory and conducting missions far from our own land.
03:07These are the characteristics of an offensive doctrine that must be realized.
03:12The IRGC is now tasked with achieving this readiness
03:15and developing the capability to execute such operations at the appropriate time.
03:21Meanwhile, Iran's foreign minister, Sayyid Abbas al-Rahqchi, took a dig at the US intelligence.
03:26He said the failures of US intelligence has led to miscalculations.
03:30He wrote on X, and I quote,
03:32The US has long miscalculated due to intelligence failures.
03:36Case in point, the war on Iran.
03:38Now, an even bigger miscalculation on the Strait of Hormons.
03:43Worse than fake news is fake intelligence.
03:45Be careful.
03:47Allah is great, greater than any power on earth.
03:50In Allah we trust, he wrote.
03:53Former Pakistan Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed came under fire for sharing stage with Lashkar-e-Tawibah terrorists.
04:01Sheikh Rashid praised Lashkar-e-Tawibah Chief Hafiz Saeed and issued threats against India at an event.
04:07This is not the first time Rashid has done it,
04:09but he was seen sitting beside Khalid Masood Sandhu,
04:13Senior Lashkar-e-Tawibah Commander and President of the Pakistan Merkazi Muslim League,
04:18that's PMML,
04:19and Karim Mohamed Yaqub Sheikh, a member of the LET Central Advisory Committee.
04:53The
05:22The
05:24The former minister made a series of remarks praising Saeed and expressing support for him.
05:29Rashid also claimed that he was expelled from the U.S. after half of Saeed's phone number was found in
05:34his phone.
05:35But his limits went unchecked when he issued warnings to India.
05:39He warned that India would be destroyed if it looked at Pakistan.
05:42Rashid's appearance along with L.E.T. terrorists is very crucial as these terrorists are hand in glove with the
05:49current Pakistani military establishment,
05:51led by Asa Munir, a man who is responsible for putting Rashid's former boss, Imran Khan, in jail.
05:58Rashid served as the interior minister in the Imran Khan government from 2020 to 2022.
06:04He is also the founder and leader of Awami Muslim League.
06:10The U.N. Security Council's latest monitoring report has attributed the November 2025 Redford blast in Delhi to Al-Qaeda
06:18in the Indian subcontinent.
06:19That's AQIS.
06:21The report raised concerns over AQIS's growing presence in Afghanistan and attempts to expand into Bangladesh and have footprint in
06:29India as well.
06:29It also flagged Al-Qaeda and ISIL's long-standing interest in chemical and biological weapons.
06:36Meanwhile, security has been tightened around the Redford area ahead of India's 80th Independence Day celebrations, with around 20,000
06:45personnel deployed.
06:54Less than a year after November 2025 blast near Delhi's Redford, a United Nations Security Council report has officially attributed
07:02the blast to Al-Qaeda in the Indian subcontinent, or AQIS.
07:09The 38th report of the Analytic Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team was submitted to the Security Council's 1,267 Sanctions
07:18Committee.
07:20The report has also expressed concerns about the group's presence in Afghanistan.
07:25As the branch of Al-Qaeda founded in September 2014, it is also attempting to expand its operations into Bangladesh.
07:33It further added that AQIS leaders are based in Kabul and continue to operate using Afghan national identity documents.
07:40The report said AQIS had continued to develop from a fragmented group into a regional terrorist entity.
07:48It is also said Al-Qaeda and ISIL had shown a sustained interest over many years in developing chemical and
07:55biological weapons,
07:56but had so far failed to overcome the technical challenges involved.
08:01The report said instructions on how to develop such weapons had been shared widely within online terrorist communities.
08:08The report states that at the end of 2025, Indian authorities had arrested three people, including a doctor.
08:20A deadly and high-intensity explosion had rocked the Redford area in New Delhi in November 2025,
08:28killing about 15 people and injuring many more.
08:32Indian authorities probed the incident as a terror-related incident.
08:35The blast had dripped through a slow-moving car at a traffic signal near the Redford metro station.
08:48The vehicle was being driven by suicide bomber Umar Unnabhi,
08:53who recorded a video message before carrying out the attack.
08:58The vehicle was being driven by suicide bomber.
08:59When a person presumes that he is going for sure die at a particular place, at a particular time,
09:15he goes against the presumption that a particular UK is going to die in a particular situation.
09:26It's not, we don't have, we don't have a situation.
09:40India has been reiterating for years that Pakistan and its terror proxies are behind the terror attacks on Indian soil.
09:47As the UN report voices India's concerns, New Delhi has beefed up the security ahead of 80th Independence Day celebrations.
09:57About 20,000 personnel from the Delhi police, paramilitary forces and National Security Guard
10:03have been deployed for the Prime Minister's address.
10:08Euro Report, India Today.
10:14Nepal may have just lost the 210-year-old paper that defines its border with India.
10:20So how will Nepal now claim territories, disputed territories, when it does not have papers to show for?
10:27The Nepal government says it cannot confirm whether it has the original 1816 Sogoli Treaty,
10:33the agreement that helped define Nepal's boundary with British India.
10:38A parliamentary search checked archives, libraries, ministries, museums and repositories.
10:45Still no original.
10:47And the timing could hardly be worse.
10:49The Lipulik-Kalapani-Limpiadhura dispute with India has returned to the spotlight,
10:54with both sides holding very different views of where the border lies.
10:59So has Nepal lost the document behind one of its biggest territorial claims?
11:03And more importantly, if the original treaty really is gone,
11:07does that punch a hole in Nepal's case,
11:09or is this missing paper mystery much less powerful than it sounds?
11:15So what exactly does this treaty say?
11:17The Sogoli Treaty followed Nepal's defeat in the Anglo-Nepal War of 1814-1816.
11:24Signed in December 1815 and ratified in March 1816,
11:28it set the boundary between Nepal and British India
11:31and became the foundation of Nepal's modern territorial boundaries.
11:36And one part matters more than almost everything else in today's dispute.
11:40Article 5 made the Kali or Mahakali River Nepal's western boundary.
11:45Sounds simple. It isn't.
11:48Because the entire argument now comes down to one question.
11:51Where does the Kali River begin?
11:54Nepal says it begins at Limpiadhura.
11:56If that is the starting point, Nepal's argument is straightforward.
12:00Limpiadhura, Kalapani and Lipu Lake sit east of the river.
12:04So they belong to Nepal.
12:05India says the Kali originates from springs below the Lipu Lake region
12:11and points to administrative and revenue records to support its claim
12:15that Kalapani was historically administered as part of
12:19Pithorghar district of undivided Uttar Pradesh, now Uttarakhand.
12:23Both countries have also invoked British-era maps and records.
12:28And here is the catch.
12:29The Sugoli Treaty itself never explicitly identified Limpiadhura as the Kali source.
12:35No mutually authenticated map defining that source is known to have accompanied the treaty.
12:40So this is not simply a case of finding an old document,
12:43opening it on camera and declaring,
12:46there's your border.
12:47If only history came with subtitles.
12:50Now does Nepal losing the original treaty destroy its claim?
12:53No, not even close.
12:55The missing original creates an evidentiary problem,
12:59not an automatic legal defeat.
13:01The treaty has been reproduced in historical collections
13:04and referenced for more than two centuries by governments,
13:08historians, cartographers and legal scholars.
13:12Copies, ratification records, diplomatic correspondence,
13:16maps, administrative records and other archival material can all matter.
13:21So what does the missing original actually change?
13:24It makes the search for reliable evidence more important.
13:28Nepal cannot say the original is gone,
13:31so everything covered by the treaty comes back to us.
13:34But India cannot say Nepal lost its copy,
13:37therefore our interpretation wins.
13:39Neither argument works that neatly.
13:41And why does this suddenly matter so much?
13:44Because this border dispute is already political dynamite.
13:48In 2020, India inaugurated an 80-kilometre road
13:51connecting Uttarakhand with Lipu Lake.
13:53Nepal protested, saying the road passed through territory it claimed.
13:58Then came the big move.
13:59KP Sharma Oli's government issued a new political map
14:02that included Limpiadura, Lipu Lake and Kalapani.
14:06Parliament endorsed it through a constitutional amendment.
14:09India rejected the move as an artificial enlargement
14:12of Nepal's territorial claims.
14:14Now, at the latest complication,
14:17India and China agreed to reopen trade route through Lipu Lake.
14:21Nepal objected against saying Lipu Lake,
14:23Limpiadura and Kalapani are integral parts of its territory.
14:27So could the missing treaty become a diplomatic weapon?
14:30Absolutely.
14:32In Kathmandu, that missing original can fuel questions
14:35about how Nepal preserved documents tied to its territorial history.
14:39It can also strengthen nationalist pressure on any government
14:43that appears too willing to compromise.
14:45In New Delhi, the same uncertainty can reinforce the argument
14:48that the dispute cannot be settled by one old document alone.
14:53But what if the original never turns up?
14:55Then what decides the border?
14:57Evidence.
14:58Historical maps, administrative and revenue records,
15:02treaty copies, diplomatic correspondence,
15:04later agreements and the conduct of both sides over time.
15:08The original paper would be hugely valuable,
15:10but its physical absence does not erase the agreement
15:13or everything else that survives.
15:16That is why this is bigger than a missing document.
15:19The real fight is over what the Sugoli Treaty means,
15:22where the Kali River begins
15:23and which historical records should carry the most weight.
15:27And that brings us to the uncomfortable truth for both sides.
15:31Nepal cannot turn a missing original
15:33into an automatic territorial victory.
15:35India cannot turn a missing original
15:38into an automatic victory either.
15:41The paper may be missing in Nepal,
15:43but other parties have the original.
15:45The dispute is not missing.
15:47The real battle sits in the maps,
15:49the records, historical evidence
15:51and ultimately at the negotiating table.
15:55What if the next big trade route connecting India to Europe
15:59does not run through the Suez Canal,
16:01but through the frozen Arctic?
16:03What if melting ice is opening a new geopolitical highway
16:07and Russia wants India on it?
16:10Russian President Vladimir Putin says
16:12India is showing growing interest in the Northern Sea route.
16:16And this is not just about ships.
16:18It is about oil, trade, China, Western sanctions
16:21and who controls the emerging gateway to the Arctic.
16:26President Vladimir Putin has said
16:27India is among the key countries exploring cooperation
16:30with Moscow on the Northern Sea route.
16:32He says interest is growing among Asian powers,
16:36particularly India and China,
16:37as Russia pushes to turn the Arctic corridor
16:40into a major trade route linking Europe and Asia.
16:44Russia always, even, always выступала,
16:49and now, and now,
16:50подтверждает свою готовность
16:53to сотрудничество,
16:54to use the преимуществ
16:57of the Western and Western Europe.
16:59Of course, in the framework of
17:01the international and Western Europe,
17:04and the countries that want to work,
17:09they want to be interested in this.
17:11It is, first of all, our country,
17:13India, India, and other countries.
17:16They are talking about it on the internet.
17:19So what exactly is the Northern Sea route?
17:22It runs along Russia's Arctic coastline,
17:24connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans
17:27through waters north of Siberia.
17:29Russia says it can offer a faster alternative
17:32to traditional routes such as the Suez Canal,
17:34but this is no ordinary shipping lane.
17:37The route passes through some of the harshest waters on the planet.
17:42Extreme cold, sea ice, and limited infrastructure
17:45make Arctic navigation difficult.
17:48Ships need specialized designs and often icebreaker support.
17:52But melting ice sea is gradually extending the period
17:55during which the route can be used.
17:59And Russia wants to turn that opportunity
18:01into a geopolitical advantage.
18:03Moscow has invested heavily in ports, navigation systems,
18:06and a fleet of nuclear-powered icebreakers.
18:09The goal is ambitious to transform the Northern Sea route
18:12from a difficult Arctic passage
18:14into a regular global trade artery.
18:17That push has become even more urgent
18:20after Western sanctions over the Ukraine conflict
18:23forced Russia to redirect much of its trade
18:26and energy exports towards Asian markets.
18:29Russia has already increased oil shipments
18:31to Asia through the Arctic.
18:33China is also expanding its use of that route.
18:36And now, India is entering the picture.
18:40For New Delhi, this is not simply about
18:41finding another shipping route.
18:43It is about securing stronger access to Russian energy,
18:46expanding connectivity, and creating another link
18:49with a major strategic partner.
18:52India and Russia have agreed to develop shipping routes
18:55through the Northern Sea route
18:56and establish a joint mechanism for cooperation.
18:59India is also pursuing other connectivity projects
19:02with Russia, including the International North-South Transport Corridor,
19:07or the INSTC, and the Chennai-Vladivostok Maritime Route.
19:11The Arctic route could add another option.
19:15And there is a very important energy angle here.
19:17India is a major buyer of Russian oil.
19:20A more direct Arctic shipping route
19:22could potentially improve connectivity with Russia
19:25and strengthen India's access to energy and other goods.
19:29But there is another reason Moscow wants India involved.
19:32Russia does not want its Arctic future
19:34to depend entirely on China.
19:37With Western pressure restricting Moscow's economic options,
19:40India offers Russia another major Asian partner.
19:44Greater Indian participation could help diversify trade
19:47and deepen Russia's links with Asia.
19:49But the Northern Sea route is not just a commercial story.
19:53It is becoming a geopolitical story.
19:56Putin has warned of what he calls
19:58growing artificial tensions in the Arctic.
20:00Moscow says NATO expansion and increasing Western military activity
20:04are turning the region into an arena of strategic competition.
20:08And the stakes are enormous.
20:10The Arctic holds vast oil, gas, and mineral resources.
20:14As sea ice recedes, access to those resources
20:18and to new shipping lanes becomes increasingly valuable.
20:22Russia, the United States of America, NATO members, and Asian powers
20:26are all watching the region very closely.
20:29For India, the opportunity is significant, but so are the challenges.
20:33Arctic shipping remains expensive, technically demanding,
20:35and dependent on specialized vessels and infrastructure.
20:39The route is not about replacing the Suez Canal overnight.
20:42It is about building another option for the future.
20:45And that future is precisely what Putin is betting on.
20:48Russia wants the Northern Sea route to become
20:50a reliable trade corridor between Europe and Asia.
20:54India is now being positioned as an important partner
20:57in that transformation.
20:59Because the Arctic is changing.
21:01The ice is receding.
21:03Trade routes are shifting.
21:04And geopolitical competition is moving north.
21:07For India, interest in the Northern Sea route could mean
21:10more than a new maritime connection.
21:12It could mean a new strategic gateway to Russian energy,
21:17trade, and the emerging Arctic economy.
21:20The Arctic may look distant from New Delhi,
21:23but its importance is moving closer.
21:25As Russia builds the infrastructure and the ice retreats,
21:28India now has a choice.
21:30Watch the Arctic race from the sidelines
21:33or secure a place on the route before others do.
21:37A 17-year-old Indian-origin teenager
21:40has been charged with murdering his mother and younger brother
21:43at their home in USS Massachusetts.
21:46In addition to murder charges,
21:48the miner faces two counts,
21:49each of assault and battery on a household or family member
21:53and assault and battery as well.
21:55He killed his 45-year-old mother and 14-year-old brother.
21:59The incident came into light
22:01after police received a call on the 11th of August
22:03from the miner's father.
22:05The father said he was unable to contact his wife and children.
22:09A tutor who was expected at the house
22:11could not contact the family.
22:13According to the Middlesex District Attorney's Office and Police,
22:17the two victims were found later dead inside their home in Acton.
22:23When officers arrived at the home,
22:25they found the brother dead on the first floor
22:27and mother in the finished basement.
22:30Probe is on to find out the exact cause and manner of death
22:34and if any weapon was used at all.
22:37Police said the accused was not at the house
22:39when officers arrived and had allegedly fled in his mother's car.
22:43He was later arrested.
22:45According to the Attorney's Office,
22:47the miner had recently displayed concerning behaviour
22:49including using the internet and chat GPT
22:53to search for theoretical ideas or fantasies
22:56about killing his family.
22:57He's also charged with unauthorised use of a vehicle
23:01and theft of a motor vehicle.
23:04That's all we have in this edition of Statecraft.
23:06Before we go, millions across Europe, Greenland and the Atlantic
23:09witnessed one of Nature's most spectacular shows
23:12on the 12th of August a total solar eclipse
23:16as the moon completely covered the sun
23:18and plunged parts of the daytime world into darkness.
23:22Indian sky watchers, however, missed out on the spectacle
23:25and if you're wondering when India gets its next chance,
23:28mark March 20, 2034.
23:31That's when the moon's shadow is expected to sweep across India,
23:35giving millions here a chance to experience totality
23:38without travelling abroad.
23:39Until then, there are plenty of meteor showers,
23:42lunar eclipses and other celestial events to keep watching.
23:45But for the full disappearing sun experience,
23:482034 is the date to remember.
23:50With that, it's goodbye from me.
23:52Take care.
23:57Take care.
24:22You
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