Doctor at Centre of Red Fort Explosion Probe Recorded Video; Modi Must Also Address Indigenous Replications of Project Macaulay; Doval Disowns Old Statement on ISI & Hindus

A newsletter from The Wire | Founded by Tanweer Alam, Sidharth Bhatia, Pratik Kanjilal, Seema Chishti, Sushant Singh, MK Venu, and Siddharth Varadarajan | Contributing writer: Kalrav Joshi, with additional inputs by Anirudh SK

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Snapshot of the day

November 18, 2025

Siddharth Varadarajan

A video has surfaced in which Dr Muhammad Umar – the doctor who apparently died along with 12 others near the Red Fort in Delhi last week when the car he was driving exploded – speaks of ‘martyrdom operations’. The video, said to have been recovered from one of his discarded phones, is evidently a ‘draft’ statement – rambling, inchoate and incoherent – in which Umar attempts to rebrand the “misunderstood concept” of suicide bombings. But it helps fill in some of the blanks as investigators try to piece together the sequence and motivation for what the police have said was an ‘accidental blast’.

In a short video, Nasir Khuehami, convenor of the Jammu Kashmir National Students Association, has debunked Umar’s purported ‘theological’ justification for the killing of innocent people. And the Union Information and Broadcasting Ministry has told television channels not to broadcast Umar’s recording. “Such broadcasts may inadvertently encourage or incite violence, disrupt public order, and pose risks to national security,” it said.

In the absence of any further progress in the case, investigative agencies have begun throwing the book at the private al-Falah University, which employed Umar and two other alleged plotters. On Tuesday, the Enforcement Directorate arrested Javed Siddiqui, the CEO and founder of the university on money laundering charges.

Speaking of money laundering, Shikhar Dhawan, the former Indian cricketer being probed by the ED, has suddenly emerged as an advocate of ‘Hindu rashtra’.

The Modi government faces no immediate pressure to respond to Dhaka’s request for Sheikh Hasina to be extradited – a formal extradition process has yet to be launched and would likely take months if not years. However, ‘Crimes against humanity’ – for which the former Bangladeshi Prime Minister and her Home Minister were sentenced to death in absentia on Monday – is an extraditable offence under the India-Bangladesh Extradition Treaty of 2013 provided the offence is punishable in both countries. But are crimes against humanity punishable in India? “India interprets such charges differently,” thereby “[opening] a space where India could argue that the charged offence does not fit the definition required for extradition under its own legal system”, argues Jayant Jacob. Suhasini Haidar also evaluates the legal issues at stake and concludes that New Delhi has multiple options.

Meanwhile, internationals rights organisations have criticised the Dhaka-based International Crimes Tribunal’s death sentence to Hasina and Asaduzzaman Kamal, with Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch saying that their in absentia trial was unfair. An organisation called the International Council of Jurists – helmed by one Adish C Aggarwala, advocate and author of the hagiographical Narendra Modi - A Charismatic & Visionary