New Delhi: The Red Fort attack module initially experimented with fertilisers and organic substances such as sugar and petroleum Jelly to make explosives, but abandoned the idea after they succeeded in producing Triacetone Triperoxide (TATP), known as the ‘Mother of Satan’ for its high sensitivity to heat and highly explosive nature, according to an NIA probe.
Their experiments with NPK fertilisers (commercial agricultural fertilisers containing Nitrogen, Phosphorus and Potassium) started in November 2023 about two years before the 10 November 2025 terror attack that left more than a dozen dead.
The two prime accused doctors—suicide bomber Umar un Nabi and Adeel Ahmed Rather—started their early experiments when they were employed at the Government Medical College Jammu and Kashmir’s Anantnag, according to an chargesheet filed before a special NIA court in Delhi.
They allegedly wanted to convert NPK fertilisers into explosives by mixing them with organic substances such as sugar and petroleum jelly, the NIA probe reveals.
Alongside that, they also continued experimenting with other commercially available chemicals to try and produce even more deadly explosives. “They were attempting to synthesise high explosives like ETN (Precursor of PETN), and explosive substances like TATP,” according to the NIA.
By the end of 2024, Nabi and Dr Muzammil Shakeel Ganie, an Al-Falah University doctor now under arrest, had successfully synthesised TATP in small batches.
“Buoyed by this initial success, the group decided to mass-produce TATP to fabricate multiple IEDs in various formats, such as vehicle-borne, suitcase, and remote-controlled IEDs. For this purpose, they needed a larger premise at an isolated location. They identified the rented accommodation owned by Jumma Khan in the village of Khori Jamalpur, near Al-Falah University,” the NIA probe reveals.
Triacetone Triperoxide (TATP) is also known as the ‘Mother of Satan’ for its high sensitivity to heat and highly explosive nature.
Having tasted success with their small-scale experiments in producing TATP, the members of terror module decided to abandon other experiments and focus solely on mass producing TATPs to fabricate multiple Improvised Explosive Device (IEDs in various formats, such as vehicle-borne, suitcase, and remote-controlled IEDs.
In a span of a few months, they had assembled as many as 16 trolley bags full of TATP-based IEDs, the NIA probe has revealed.
Four such TATP-filled trolley bags were on the rear seat of the Hyundai I-20 car alleged driven by suicide bomber Nabi on the evening of 10 November. The car exploded right outside the Red Fort in the heart of Delhi, killing more than a dozen people, and leaving more than 30 injured.
Shifting bases does little to shift objectives
The origin of Nabi’s indoctrination goes even further back, to when he was pursuing his MBBS at a government medical college in Srinagar and came into contact with a local Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) overground worker, Tufail Ahmad Bhat at the government hospital, according to the NIA probe.
In its chargesheet, the NIA alleged that by the last few months of 2023, Nabi and Adeel Ahmed Rather—when they were working at GMC Anantnag—started experimenting with commercially available substances that could be combined to form an explosive.
By May 2024, Nabi rejoined Faridabad’s Al-Falah University as an assistant professor in the Medicine Department, beginning his second tenure at the university after serving from 2021-2022, alongside Muzaffar Ahmad Rather, the elder brother of Adeel Ahmad Rather.
The NIA has so far arrested 11 people in connection with the blast. One of them is also Dr Muzammil Shakeel Ganie, who had joined Al-Falah University in October 2021 and was working in its Physiology Department.
Muzaffar is the lone absconding accused in the case, and the NIA has traced his last location in Afghanistan. He left India in August last year, three months before the Red Fort blast, and a lookout circular was issued against him in December, which remains pending.
While Ganie continued in his role in the Physiology Department, Rather shifted his job and base from Anantnag in Jammu and Kashmir to Saharanpur in Uttar Pradesh in March 2025.
But whenever they shifted, they did not abandon their conspiracy, the NIA said.
According to the NIA findings, Rather guided Nabi and Ganie in their initial experiments to convert NPK fertilisers into explosives by mixing them with organic substances such as sugar and petroleum jelly.
To produce explosives on a large scale in a short period, Ganie purchased more than 20 quintals of fertiliser from three different shops in Faridabad between December 2023 and January 2024.
According to the NIA, Ganie also procured a pulveriser to convert fertiliser granules into finer powder required to make an explosive, as well as a Metal-Melting Furnace for preparing explosive substances.
By May 2024, Nabi returned to Al-Falah, and Ganie teamed up with him to further their experiments with explosives.
Meanwhile, by July that year, they purchased chemicals such as Sulphuric Acid, Potassium Chloride, Mercury, Potassium Dichromate, and distilled water, along with equipment such as beakers, cylinders, thermometers, drills, and flasks, from the local market in the Delhi-NCR region.
However, they were in pursuit of one key piece of equipment—an Anode made of titanium for use in the electrolysis process —and searched the market in Delhi and online marketplaces such as IndiaMart. Nabi found one Mumbai-based supplier of the equipment and made a false identity on the online marketplace to procure that.
TATP, the explosive of choice
As the series of experiments continued, Nabi allegedly succeeded in producing a small amount of TATP at his residential accommodation on the Al-Falah campus. This taste of success prompted both Nabi and Ganie to “change their strategies” and to synthesise more effective explosives from commercially available chemicals.
For this purpose, they relied on the instructions and guidelines in radical Jehadi literature containing instructions on making explosives.
Nabi and Ganie conducted a test blast with the small quantity of TATP produced at Nabi’s flat in a field outside Al-Falah University, where they realised that even a small quantity of TATP was sufficient to cause large-scale destruction.
“Hence, the group decided to focus only on producing TATP, and the group members discontinued the procurement and experimentation with NPK fertiliser-based explosives. For this purpose, A-1 and A-4 (Nabi and Ganie) procured several 25-litre cans of Hydrogen Peroxide and Acetone from the local market during Nov 2024,” the agency alleged in the chargesheet.
However, they also realised that to produce such highly explosive material in huge quantity, they needed more space, bigger than the flat of Nabi on the university campus and at an isolated location, for which they identified the rented accommodation owned by one Jumma Khan at the Khori Jamalpur village near the Al-Falah University.
At the rented accommodation outside the university campus, both Nabi and Ganie began preparing TATP and stored it in a portable, collapsible water storage bag with a 10-litre capacity to keep it moist and prevent accidental explosion.
By March last year, Nabi and Ganie had prepared enough TATP to fill 16 trolley bags—four of which Nabi kept at his accommodation on the university campus.
The remaining 12 were shifted to another rented accommodation at the Fatehpur Taga village in Faridabad, which were recovered in raids by the Jammu and Kashmir Police just before the explosion on 10 November.
After the arrest of Ganie on 30 October, a panicked Nabi loaded those four trolleys filled with TATP and kept them with him for 10 days before they exploded outside Red Fort.
(Edited by Ajeet Tiwari)