New Delhi: The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has arrested another key associate of alleged Red Fort bomber Umar Un Nabi. The arrested person, identified as Jasir Bilal Wani alias Danish, was taken into custody by the NIA from Srinagar.
According to sources, Bilal was “brainwashed” by Nabi. This is the second arrest by the NIA in this case. The Jammu and Kashmir police has arrested nine other persons.
An agency spokesperson said, “NIA investigations have revealed that Jasir Bilal allegedly provided technical support for carrying out terror attacks by modifying drones and attempting to make rockets ahead of the car bomb blast.”
The 10 November blast near the Red Fort metro station killed at least 13 and injured 31 others.
Bilal, according to the agency, is a resident of Qazigund in the Anantnag district of Jammu and Kashmir. “He was an active co-conspirator behind the attack and had worked closely with the terrorist, Umar un Nabi, to plan the terror carnage,” the spokesperson said.
“The NIA continues to explore various angles to unravel the conspiracy behind the bombing. Several teams of the anti-terror agency are pursuing multiple leads, and are conducting searches across states to identify every person involved in the terror attack,” the spokesperson added.
His father Bilal Ahmed Wani died allegedly by suicide Monday.
Earlier Sunday, the NIA arrested Aamit Rashid who was seen with the i20 car, which exploded near the Red Fort in the evening of 10 November, in a now-viral photo. He allegedly visited a local dealer in Faridabad with Nabi to buy the car on 29 October.
Muzammil Shakeel, Dr Adeel Rather Ahmed and Dr Shaheen Shahid are among the doctors arrested by the Jammu and Kashmir police on terror charges for being part of this “white collar terror module”.
Investigators say the accused were working with cross-border handlers and are associated with the Jaish-e-Mohammed and the Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind and conspired to execute serial car blasts.
The sources said a forensic analysis of explosives used in the 10 November blast near Red Fort confirmed that it was a mixture of ammonium nitrate and triacetone triperoxide (TATP)—an unstable and volatile combination.
(Edited by Ajeet Tiwari)
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