Hours before a car exploded in a crowded market near Delhi’s Red Fort on Monday, the Jammu and Kashmir police said it had cracked open an “inter-state and transnational terror module”.
Over the last three weeks, the Jammu and Kashmir police arrested seven people as part of its investigations.
Among those were two doctors from Kashmir – Dr Adeel Ahmad Rather who works at a hospital in Saharanpur, Uttar Pradesh, and Dr Muzamil Shakeel who is employed at a hospital in Faridabad, Haryana. Jammu and Kashmir police officials, who declined to be identified, said another Kashmiri doctor, working at the same Faridabad hospital, has gone missing since the arrests began.
The module, the police said, was linked with the banned “terrorist organizations, Jaish-e-Mohammad and Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind”.
Jaish-e-Mohammad is a Pakistan-based militant group headed by a globally designated terrorist Masood Azhar. It has a history of carrying out terrorist attacks in India, including the 2019 Pulwama suicide bombing.
Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind was formed in Kashmir in 2017 when some militants broke away from Hizbul Mujahideen – the largest indigenous militant organisation in Kashmir – and claimed that they were affiliated to Al Qaeda. However, the group has not been known to carry out major terror strikes.
So far, security agencies in Jammu and Kashmir and Delhi have not officially linked the busted module with the Red Fort blast on Monday evening that has led to at least eight deaths.
The Jammu and Kashmir police’s three-week-long investigations and searches across Kashmir, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, have led to the recovery of “massive cache of arms, ammunition and explosives…”
Besides two pistols and two automatic rifles, the police said they recovered 2900 kg of material to make improvised explosive devices or IED – “explosives, chemicals, reagents, inflammable material, electronic circuits, batteries, wires, remote control, timers and metal sheets etc”.
After the Delhi blast, the Jammu and Kashmir police arrested three people from Samboora village in South Kashmir’s Pulwama district, police officials said. Two of them are brothers, and the third is a bank security guard.
‘White-collar terror ecosystem’
One of the most striking features about the terror cell is the alleged involvement of professionals.
On November 6, the Jammu and Kashmir police in coordination with the Uttar Pradesh police arrested Dr Adeel Ahmad Rather from Saharanpur. A resident of South Kashmir’s Kulgam district, Rather was working as a specialist at a private hospital in Saharanpur. Before that, he was employed as a senior resident in Government Medical College, Anantnag. He is the son of a retired tehsildar.
The second medical professional arrested in the case, Dr Muzamil Shakeel, is a resident of Koil village in South Kashmir’s Pulwama district. Shakeel was working as a tutor in the department of Physiology at Al-Falah School of Medical Sciences & Research Centre in Faridabad, Haryana.
Shakeel’s brother, Azad Shakil told Press Trust of India that Dr Muzamil had visited home in June as his father was undergoing surgery. “Everyone is alleging that he is a terrorist, but we have nothing to do with it,” he told PTI. “There hasn’t been a single case against our family in 50 years. We are Indians by heart – we have even faced stone pelting for India.”
The third missing doctor, police officials said, was Dr Umer Nabi, who works as an assistant professor in the general medicine department of the Al-Falah hospital in Faridabad. Like Shakeel, he is from Koil village in Pulwama.
Posters in the city
The investigations into the module were triggered by the appearance of pro-Jaish-e-Mohammad posters in Nowgam, an area on Srinagar’s outskirts, on October 19, the police said.
Initially, the police detained three persons from Nowgam. Investigations led them to Shakeel, who were arrested in Haryana, and Rather, who was detained in Uttar Pradesh. Besides the two doctors, the police arrested a cleric Molvi Irfan Ahmad from South Kashmir’s Shopian district and Zameer Ahmad Ahanger, a resident of central Kashmir’s Ganderbal district.
According to the police, the group was communicating via encrypted channels “for indoctrination, coordination, fund movement and logistics”. Funds for the operation, the police said, were raised “through professional and academic networks, under the guise of social/charitable causes”.
A preemptive crackdown
While the investigations into the posters was going on, the Jammu and Kashmir police last week launched a widespread crackdown against what it called the “terror ecosystem” and targeted “Over Ground Workers (OGWs), UAPA and PSA accused persons, sympathisers, and relatives of killed and active terrorists, particularly in areas where encounters had earlier taken place”.
The Unlawful Activities Prevention Act is a stringent anti-terrorism law, while the Public Safety Act is a preventive detention law unique to Jammu and Kashmir.
The police have also detained relatives of dozens of Jammu and Kashmir residents who are alleged to be operating from Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir.
During the crackdown, more than 1,500 people were detained for questioning across Kashmir Valley. According to the police, the crackdown is a “pre-emptive measure” meant to keep militants and their support networks under “constant pressure” and prevent any attempts of militants to “disrupt peace”.
In a first, the police has also filed dozens of applications before the court, seeking cancellation of bails to those booked under Unlawful Activities Prevention Act and have been released on bail. “This action is part of the police’s zero-tolerance policy towards terrorism and its support networks,” the police said.
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