New Delhi: A key leader of the Kashmir terror module plotting what could have been India’s largest terrorist attack since 1993 secretly left the country for Afghanistan in mid-August, ThePrint has learnt.
Muzaffar Ahmad Rather, a 33-year-old paediatrician, is believed to have been asked to liaise between the Kashmir terror cell and the Afghanistan-based jihadists on bomb-making and assault techniques, say intelligence sources.
Paediatrician Muzaffar, who was based in Srinagar before he left the country, is one of two older brothers of Adeel Ahmad Rather, the 31-year-old doctor and terror cell commander arrested from Uttar Pradesh’s Saharanpur by the Jammu and Kashmir Police.
The J&K Police have said a Kalashnikov assault rifle and ammunition were recovered from one of Adeel’s lockers during their investigation into the terror module, including Kashmir doctors working at Al Falah hospital in Haryana’s Faridabad.
One of them, Dr Umar un Nabi, was allegedly running away in his white i20— post recent raids in Faridabad—carrying the explosives that the terror cell had been accumulating Monday, when his car exploded. Among the 13 who died in Monday’s blast near Delhi’s Red Fort metro station was Umar.
The Rather family did not respond to requests from ThePrint for comments on Muzaffar’s current location.
An intelligence officer claimed that a few details had become available after Muzaffar’s journey to Afghanistan. The officer said the paediatrician first travelled to Dubai, and then told his family he wished to “serve a truly Islamic society and state”.
The officer said Muzaffar, along with Al-Falah medical school professor Muzammil Ahmad Gani and his colleague Umar un Nabi, travelled to Turkey in March 2022. Intelligence sources say the group, at that time, had made unsuccessful efforts to travel to Afghanistan, where they had hoped to undergo combat training.
In recent years, evidence has regularly emerged that terrorist groups are training recruits online, providing basic lessons in combat tactics, fabricating improvised explosive devices (IEDs), and teaching ways to use weapons.
“Even though it’s far too early to be sure…,” the intelligence officer said, “…I suspect the failure to reach Afghanistan in 2022 was a kind of psychological turning point. If they could not engage in ‘hijrat (migration)’, or leave India for an Islamic land, there was no choice in their minds but to wage jihad against a nation in which they saw themselves as oppressed.”
Muzaffar’s departure for Afghanistan likely indicates that the plans for the bomb strikes had reached a critical point, a second intelligence officer told ThePrint.
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Kashmir doctors & cleric
Kashmir-based cleric Irfan Ahmad, who ran an Islamist study circle in Srinagar, introduced the Kashmir doctors to jihad commanders based in Afghanistan’s Kunar region, intelligence sources said. He allegedly made assault weapons, originally hidden by Nadeem Muzaffar, available to the doctors. Nadeem, who was killed in 2018, was a member of Kashmir’s Al-Qaeda wing, Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind—an organisation linked to the terror cell, besides Jaish-e-Mohammad, from the early days.
The members of Irfan’s study group were theologically drawn to a breakaway current arising from the Deoband ideology, pioneered by the Hyderabad cleric Abdul Aleem Islahi. But they were inspired by Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind’s idea of creating a group free of any associations with intelligence services and guided by the principles of the faith.
Islamic study groups like the one offered by Irfan have flourished in recent years, many driven by the proselytising activities of the Tablighi Jama’at. Though the Tablighi Jama’at insists it is pietist and stands against politics, some of its recruits are drawn into more radical circles.
Funding for the foreign travel and the bomb-making equipment came largely from the personal savings of Lucknow-based doctor Shaheen Saeed, investigators allege.
Kashmiri jihadists have been involved in running several different jihadist groups from this entropic milieu in southern Afghanistan. In 2022, the United Nations Security Council reported that the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad ran camps, providing training services to the Taliban.
Former Srinagar resident Sheikh Sajjad Gul is believed to have run the operational facilities of the Lashkar-e-Taiba front organisation—The Resistance Front. Kashmir veteran Qari Ramzan, on the other hand, runs the Jaish-e-Mohammad Afghan operations.
‘Impossible to believe’
A National Investigation Agency official told ThePrint that insights have also emerged on why Adeel and his aides decided to set up a jihadist group after 2021. Son of a tehsildar, or local government head, for the Wanpora village, Adeel studied at the privately run Crescent School before his secondary education at Yar Kushi Pora Government School. Academically talented, Adeel secured admission to the Government Medical College in Srinagar on his first attempt in 2021 and completed his senior residency in 2024.
While Muzaffar had also obtained a medical degree two years earlier, the oldest brother, Zakir Ahmad Rather, became a veterinary scientist. Their sister, Gowhar Jan, completed a postgraduate degree in medicine from Kashmir University and is married to Muzaffer Ahmad Shah, who runs a pharmaceutical business in the south Kashmir town of Kulgam.
Gowhar Jan says, “It is impossible to believe” her brothers were involved in terrorism, describing both as deeply religious and compassionate.
Adeel married Syed Ruqaya, a psychiatrist working in Srinagar’s Rainawari neighbourhood, in a two-day function from 4-5 October. Large numbers of residents attended the wedding, a guest told ThePrint, adding that those who asked about Muzaffar’s whereabouts received the answer that he was working in Dubai. Following the wedding, the couple took an eight-day vacation in Kerala before they returned to their jobs.
Even though Umar had been pushing for the bombings at the earliest possible date, some practical problems lay on the way, the intelligence officer said. The group could find timers for their explosives, but had only three cars. To make matters worse, it could not source detonators, forcing the group members to explore unreliable acid-based fuses.
The scale of the bombings, though, isn’t hard to imagine.
In 2009, terrorists of the Indian Mujahideen killed 209 people on Mumbai suburban trains, using seven pressure cookers, each packed with 30 kilograms of ammonium nitrate mixed with fuel oil.
The Kashmir doctors’ cell had accumulated several thousand kilograms of ammonium nitrate and other incendiary chemicals since 2022.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)