New Delhi: At least nine people were killed and another 29 injured in a massive explosion that rocked the Nowgam police station in Jammu and Kashmir’s Srinagar Friday night, a senior J&K government official has confirmed to ThePrint. The explosion, it is learnt, took place when a team from the forensic sciences laboratory was examining seized explosives stored in the police station compound.
Videos from the scene placed the explosion, which also led to several vehicles parked in the compound catching fire, at around 11.22 PM. Sources told ThePrint that the origin of the explosion is suspected to be explosives seized by the J&K Police from Haryana’s Faridabad in connection with a probe into a module of the terrorist outfit Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM).
An investigation is ongoing to ascertain the cause of the explosion, it is learnt.
Details on the exact number of those feared killed, or injured, are still awaited. Jammu and Kashmir Police had yet to issue an official statement in connection with the explosion at the time of publication of this report.
The Nowgam police station was at the centre of J&K Police’s crackdown against a JeM terror module allegedly involving doctors of Kashmiri origin living and working outside of the Union Territory. The same module is suspected to be behind the blast near the Red Fort in New Delhi that claimed 13 lives on 10 November.
The module was brought to the attention of the Nowgam police station by pro-Jaish posters discovered on 17 and 18 October. This led to the registration of an FIR at the Nowgam police station and the subsequent arrest of multiple over-ground workers (OGW).
The investigators, including Srinagar SSP G.V. Sundeep Chakravarthy and Kashmir Zone IG Vidhi Kumar Birdi developed the case and arrested Irfan Ahmad Wagay, a preacher from Shopian who led them to the doctors who were later arrested from Shopian on suspicion of being part of the terror module.
According to investigators, one of the doctors, Umar Nabi, was at the wheel of the white i20 that exploded near Red Fort Gate No. 1 on 10 November. Termed an act of terror by the central government, the matter is being probed by the National Investigation Agency (NIA).
In the days leading up to the explosion near Red Fort, J&K police had arrested two others, Muzammil Shakeel and Adeel Rather from Faridabad’s Al-Falah, a private medical college, and a private hospital in Uttar Pradesh’s Saharanpur. As ThePrint reported earlier, J&K police, in joint raids with Faridabad police, recovered ammonium nitrate in excess of 2,000 kg from the rented accommodation of Shakeel in Faridabad.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
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