Red Fort blast a revenge strike: Jaish-e-Muhammed planned it after Operation Sindoor damaged Pakistan HQ

NEW DELHI: Confirming that Monday’s blast near Red Fort was a terror attack, Delhi Police has registered an FIR under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.Initial intelligence inputs suggest that the blast was carried out by a Jaish-e-Muhammed (JeM) module seeking to avenge the extensive damage inflicted on the outfit’s Bahawalpur headquarters during Operation Sindoor.As reported earlier, Dr Umar Un Nabi, a member of the so-called “doctor module” who had escaped during raids by J&K Police, has been identified as the man present in the car who executed the “lone wolf fidayeen attack.”

As reported by TOI on Tuesday, Umar Un Nabi, a member of the "doctor module" who had escaped during raids by J&K Police, has been confirmed as the man present in the car who carried out the 'lone wolf fidayeen attack'.The initial investigation indicates that the handlers were based in Turkiye and Nangarhar in Afghanistan. They were in touch with Umar and other members of the module.Sleuths suspect that Umar panicked after the arrest of his associate and the main accused in the Faridabad module, Muzammil Ahmad Ganaie, and hit the road with the car rigged with high-end explosives to escape arrest.

Explosives collected over 2 yrs for strikes across cities: Sources New Delhi: Dr Umar Un Nabi, who has emerged as the prime suspect behind Monday's suspected fidayeen car blast near Red Fort, was the most radicalised member of the Faridabad module, which included the arrested Dr Muzammil Ahmad Ganaie, Dr Adeel Majeed Rather, Dr Sajad Malik and Dr Shaheen Shahid, sources connected with the investigation said on Tuesday.

Shaheen, during her interrogation in Srinagar on Monday night, conceded that Umar would passionately speak of "unleashing multiple terror attacks in the country" every time they met after work at the Al-Falah Medical College.Sources told TOI he, along with Muzammil and Adeel, had been amassing fertiliser-based explosives like ammonium nitrate for almost two years, purportedly for use in pan-India terror attacks on behalf of terror outfit Jaish-e-Muhammed (JeM).Muzammil, Adeel and Shaheen were earlier arrested by J&K police in coordinated action with UP police and Haryana police. Umar, who was teaching at Al-Falah Medical College in Faridabad, however, managed to slip away and is believed to have gone underground, only to resurface as a suspected fidayeen car bomber. He is suspected to have packed an i20 car with commercially available explosives like ammonium nitrate and detonators and triggered an IED blast in a crowded spot near Red Fort.Questioning of the arrested doctors in J&K points to a wider Jaish network. Shaheen revealed that her brother, Parvez Sayeed, was also radicalised and part of the same chat group as Muzammil and Adeel. A J&K police team on Tuesday visited Lucknow and picked up Parvez but could not make any significant recoveries.

"It is possible that he got rid of the explosives, anticipating arrest," said an officer. A Gurugram-based ammonium nitrate supplier has also been identified and may soon face raids and arrest.Source said the raids in Faridabad and the Delhi blast have exposed a network of clerics engaged in indoctrination, including a Shopian-based maulvi, Irfan Ahmed Waghey, who was directly in touch with Pakistan-based Jaish handler Umar bin Khattab, alias Harjulla. Another cleric, Mewat-based Hafiz Mohd Ishtiyak, was providing logistics to the terrorists. These clerics were using social media platforms to radicalise highly qualified professionals like doctors for carrying out pan-India terror attacks on behalf of JeM.

"Medicine being a noble profession offered the doctors a perfect cover for their conspiratorial agenda," an officer noted.This is not the first time that a Kashmiri doctor has been found engaged in terror activities. In Nov 2023, J&K LG Manoj Sinha had dismissed Dr Nisar Ul Hassan, assistant professor (medicine) at SMHS Hospital, Srinagar, over terror links. Hassan was a self-styled president of the Doctors' Association of Kashmir (DAK), which was supposedly used by him as a cover to orient medical professionals in J&K towards secessionism, under the patronage of Pakistani proxies."It is a matter of investigation if Hassan had any role in radicalising the Kashmiri doctors arrested in Faridabad or involved in the Delhi blast," said an officer.