Red Fort blast probe traces Kanpur doctors linked to arrested Jaish recruiter

Officials investigating the Delhi Red Fort car bomb blast have begun revisiting a set of old personnel records in Uttar Pradesh's Kanpur, after preliminary inputs suggested that three medical professionals who worked with Dr Shaheen Shahid in 2013 may require a fresh look.

Dr Shaheen Shahid was arrested earlier this month in Faridabad in connection with a "white-collar" terror module linked to the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM).

Officials said agencies are likely to travel to Kanpur Dehat district to verify the employment history, foreign travel and unexplained absences of doctors who were posted alongside Dr Shaheen at GSVM Medical College over a decade ago.

The renewed interest stemmed from gaps that appeared in their service records during the period when Dr Shaheen herself left the institution.

One of those doctors, Hamid Ansari, now posted at a medical college in Kanpur Dehat, said he and two colleagues had left GSVM in 2013 purely for better salaries abroad. He said he moved to Saudi Arabia to work at a university there, along with a batchmate who joined the same institution. A senior colleague, he added, took up a job at a private university.

Ansari said their departures coincided with Dr Shaheen leaving GSVM, which may have led investigators to club the timelines. "It was just a coincidence. We left for better pay, nothing more," he said, adding that all three returned to India by 2020.

One of his former colleagues, Hafizul Rahman, now works at Integral University, while another is posted at Era Medical College in Lucknow. Ansari said he was willing to cooperate fully if any agency contacts him.

The local checks come as investigators widen their focus on Dr Shaheen, who, according to early findings, had been tasked by Jaish-e-Mohammed to build and lead a women's wing in India under the banner of Jamaat-ul-Momineen.

Her arrest followed the detention of Dr Muzammil Ahmad Ganai of Faridabad's Al-Falah University.

Earlier, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) said a substantial cache of explosives was stored in Faridabad for a planned December 6 strike. Interrogations have revealed that Umar -- the suicide bomber killed outside Red Fort -- had been preparing young recruits for fidayeen missions, while the module worked on what they internally called "Operation D-6", a twin-city car-borne attack timed for the Babri demolition anniversary.

Sources said the Red Fort blast on November 10, which killed 10 and injured 32, may have been a fallback plan after the module's larger December 6 plot began to unravel. Interrogations have placed both Umar and Dr Shaheen at the centre of the conspiracy.

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(With inputs from Tanuj Awasthi.)