NEW DELHI, Nov 17: The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has arrested another key accused in connection with the Delhi car blast near Red Fort killing 13 people and injuring about 30 others.
The accused, Jasir Bilal Wani aka Danish, a resident of Qazigund in Anantnag, was arrested from Srinagar in Jammu and Kashmir. Ahead of the car bomb explosion, he had allegedly provided technical support for carrying out terror attacks by modifying drones and attempting to make rockets. Danish, officials said, was a co-conspirator and had worked closely with the alleged terrorist, Umar Un Nabi, to plan the car bomb attack.
Earlier, the NIA arrested Amir Rashid Ali in whose name the car involved in the blast was registered. He is a resident of Samboora in J&K’s Pampore and had allegedly conspired with suicide bomber Nabi, a doctor by profession. On Monday, the agency produced the accused before a Delhi court that sent him to 10-day NIA custody.
On Monday around 11.30 a.m., Ali, a resident of Pampore in South Kashmir, was brought to the court of Principal District and Sessions Judge Anju Bajaj Chandna at the Patiala House courts complex amid tight security. Media were not allowed to enter the court as the proceedings were held in camera. The court premises saw heavy deployment of Delhi Police and the Rapid Action Force (RAF), besides personnel equipped with anti-riot gear on standby to maintain order.
“Amir had come to Delhi to facilitate the purchase of the car which was eventually used as a vehicle-borne Improvised Explosive Device (IED) to trigger the blast. The NIA has forensically established the identity of the deceased driver of the vehicle-borne IED as Umar Un Nabi, a resident of Pulwama district and Assistant Professor in General Medicine Department in Al Falah University at Faridabad (Haryana),” according to the NIA.
Another vehicle belonging to Nabi has been seized. The NIA has so far examined 73 witnesses, including those injured in the blast, for clues. It is working in close coordination with the police of Delhi, Jammu & Kashmir, Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh, besides various other agencies.
The Jammu and Kashmir police’s Counter Intelligence Kashmir (CIK) has questioned a local doctor who rented out accommodation to a female doctor from Haryana. The State police has also launched a drive to check the antecedents of car dealers and fertiliser/chemical sellers. It had earlier seized about 2,900 kg of explosives, including ammonium nitrate, during the raids in Haryana’s Faridabad on November 9-10, after busting a seven-member inter-State “white collar” terror module in Kashmir.
Three doctors were arrested in the case from October 30 to November 8. The case was later found to be connected to the Delhi car blast as the person at the wheel of the i20 car that exploded near the Red Fort was purportedly known to two of them — Muzammil Ahmad Ganaie and Adeel Ahmad Rather, all three from South Kashmir.
The third doctor named Shaheen Saeed, arrested by the police, is from Lucknow. She was associated with Al Falah University, where Dr Ganaie and Dr Nabi also worked. The doctors were allegedly part of a module related to two terror outfits, Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) and Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind (AGuH). While JeM is based in Pakistan, AGuH is Al Qaeda-inspired Indian module founded by Zakir Musa, who was gunned down in an encounter with the security forces in 2019.
(Manas Dasgupta)
