New Delhi: The prime suspect in the Red Fort blast case, Dr Umar U. Nabi, had fled his workplace, Al-Falah School of Medical Sciences & Research Centre in Faridabad, around a week before he allegedly carried out the blast in Delhi, ThePrint has learnt.
Umar was ‘spooked’ by raids at the institute and at the arrest of his long-time friend and colleague, Pulwama’s Dr Muzammil Shakeel, and escaped before the Jammu & Kashmir Police could catch him.
“The case has been probed professionally with no unnecessary detentions and arrests. When raids were carried out at Muzammil’s premises in Faridabad, Umar must have been spooked that his days were numbered, and he fled before Muzammil could spill the beans on his involvement in the module,” a source in the security establishment said.
Confirming the sequence of events, another source stated that the Srinagar police arrested Muzammil on 30 October from Faridabad.
“He proved to be a tough nut to crack at the beginning. He gave in, however, revealing the names of two more doctors, Dr Adil Ahmad Rather from Anantnag and Dr Umar from Pulwama, by the third day,” the second source privy to the case details told ThePrint, adding that investigators were in the dark till 2 November about Umar’s involvement in the module.
The entire unravelling of the module, allegedly linked to Pakistan-based terrorist group Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), first began when a team of the Srinagar Police got a lead about the involvement of a Muslim religious preacher from Shopian district. The module is believed to consist of around 12 people, including four doctors whose involvement is suspected in the blast case.
The probe by the Jammu & Kashmir Police began following a trail of posters that emerged on the outskirts of Srinagar on 19 October, praising the JeM and threatening “revenge attacks”. An FIR has been filed in the poster case under provisions of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and Arms Act.
By Tuesday, the police had arrested eight suspects, including doctors Adil, Muzammil and one Lucknow resident, Shaheen Saeed. The latter has been arrested on the charge of aiding the other module members, especially Muzammil.
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‘Cleric made key revelations’
The Jammu & Kashmir Police first arrested the trio of Arif Nisar Dar, alias Sahil, Yasirul Ashraf, and Maqsood Ahmad Dar, alias Shahid, all alleged overground workers (OGWs) who were believed involved in pasting the posters in Srinagar.
“The trio was interrogated about the source of the posters and the man behind the move. Their testimony led us to Irfan Ahmad Wagay, a Shopian-based cleric. Wagay has been a preacher in a Shopian mosque and has been found involved in indoctrination of several youth visiting the mosque,” a third source privy to the case said.
Officials conceded that the extent of the module was unravelled only after the arrest of Wagay, who was revealed to be in touch with several doctors from Kashmir who were employed outside of the union territory.
“Wagay was an OGW and was a frequent visitor to the Government Medical College (GMC) in Srinagar to collect medicines for terrorists. It was during his frequent trips there that he spotted certain candidates among doctors fit for indoctrination,” the source said.
When Wagay started speaking up about the extent of the module, investigators in the Jammu & Kashmir Police understood the challenge at hand. He led the investigators to a Ganderbal-based man named Zameer Ahmad Ahanger, who further revealed the identity of the doctors involved with the module.
Based on disclosures made by the duo, the police sent a team to Faridabad and, with local police, conducted raids at Al-Falah medical college, arresting Muzammil on 30 October. He was taken to Srinagar on three-day transit remand.
He was sent to police custody for 15 days on 1 November, and it was only on 2 November that he revealed the names of the other doctors in the module.
“By the time the team began raids in Faridabad to nab Umar, he had escaped,” a police officer told ThePrint, adding that the late revelation delayed the pace of raids and recoveries.
Muzammil’s interrogation also helped investigators recover a sophisticated assault rifle from the car of Shaheen Saeed, also a faculty member at the Al-Falah institute. She was arrested Monday when she appeared for questioning before investigators.
“Many meetings between Muzammil and Umar took place in her presence. She did not raise an alarm about it. She also did not refuse to keep the assault rifle in her car and dumped it only after the case started to unravel. She has known Muzammil for three to four years and confessed to having provided him financial support,” a fourth source aware of the case details told ThePrint.
“A distinction between financial support for other routine activities and terrorist acts is yet to be ascertained.”
Further revelations by Muzammil took investigators to a medical college in Saharanpur, from where Adil was taken into custody, and his revelation helped investigators recover an AK-47 rifle from a locker in his name at GMC Anantnag.
ThePrint earlier reported that all three—Adil, Muzammil and Umar—completed MBBS studies from GMC Srinagar before moving on to GMC Anantnag as resident doctors and then as faculty.
Based on the investigation and revelations made during the interrogation of Muzammil and Adil, a joint team of the Jammu & Kashmir Police recovered more than 2,500 kg of IED-making material from a premise rented by Muzammil in Fatehpur Taga village under Dhouj police station of Faridabad Monday. Around 360 kg of the recovered explosive material and substances was ammonium nitrate, a highly inflammable substance suspected to have been used in the Red Fort blast, were seized days earlier.
While the raid was being conducted Monday, Umar was seen entering Delhi through the Badarpur border in a Hyundai i20 car that later became the source of the explosion near Red Fort, killing 12 people and injuring around two dozen others.
The Ministry of Home Affairs handed over the probe of the case to the National Investigation Agency, which initiated formalities Tuesday afternoon.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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