Srinagar: At least nine people lost their lives and 29 others were injured after a huge pile of explosives, seized from a doctor in Faridabad, went off inside a police station in Nowgam near Srinagar in Jammu and Kashmir on Friday night.
The casualty figure may rise as five of the injured are in a critical condition. Most of those killed and injured are policemen or forensics experts who were examining the explosives.
A naib tehsildar and another official of the Srinagar administration were also among those killed.
According to officials, the injured were rushed to the Indian Army’s 92 Base Hospital and Sher-i-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences (SKIMS). The area has been cordoned off and senior police officials have reached Nowgam to take stock of the situation.
It was the Nowgam police which cracked the “white-collar terror module” case involving doctors while probing the appearance of terror outfit Jaish-e-Mohammed’s posters at various locations in the area.
The probe subsequently led to the arrest of several Operatives, including a number of doctors, and the seizure of a huge quantity of explosives from Faridabad in Haryana.
One of the arrested doctors Adeel Ahmad Rather, was seen putting up these posters in October. The posters warned of big attacks on security forces and “outsiders” in Kashmir. He was arrested on October 27 and and the lid was blown off a sinister network, which was later found to be behind the Delhi blast that claimed 13 lives on November 10.
The Jammu and Kashmir Police have said that the investigation into the posters revealed a “white-collar terror ecosystem, involving radicalised professionals and students in contact with foreign handlers, operating from Pakistan and other countries.”
After scanning the CCTV footage of areas where the Jaish posters were put up, they identified Rather, who worked at the Government Medical College in Anantnag till October last year before moving to Saharanpur in Uttar Pradesh.
An assault rifle was later recovered from his locker at the Government Medical College.
While he was being questioned, the name of another doctor, Muzammil Shakeel, who worked at Al-Falah Medical College in Faridabad, came up. During the raid at houses associated with Shakeel, the joint team of Jammu and Kashmir and Haryana Police recovered nearly 3,000 kg of Ammonium Nitrate. Shakeel’s arrest led to more revelations and the arrest of another doctor, Shaheen Saeed – who worked at the same university – on November 10.
Hours later, an explosion ripped through a car which stopped at a red light on a jam-packed road near the iconic Red Fort, killing 13 people, injuring more than 20 and damaging several vehicles.
The next day, the name of another doctor – Umar Nabi – emerged. Top sources revealed he was driving the Hyundai i20 car in which the blast took place. Sources in the National Investigation Agency (NIA), which is probing the blast, said the seizure of the explosives from Faridabad may have triggered a panic situation for the suspect and compelled him to relocate.
The NIA has said that the nature of the Delhi blast indicates the suspect appeared to have assembled the improvised explosive device (IED) improperly. In his state of panic, the terrorist could not arm the IED for maximum damage, officials believe.
