Twenty-six days before a huge blast ripped through a crowded thoroughfare in Delhi, killing 13 people, a pamphlet with a green letterhead had appeared in Nowgam, a staid neighbourhood of cinder-block homes and rutted streets on the outskirts of Srinagar, Indian-administered Kashmir\u2019s main city.<\/p>\n
Drafted in broken Urdu, the letter proclaimed affiliation with Jaish-e-Muhammad, a proscribed armed group based in Pakistan.<\/p>\n
The text was loaded with warnings directed at Indian government forces stationed in the region, and at those in the local population seen as having betrayed Kashmir\u2019s separatist movement.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe warn the local people of strict action who do not adhere to this warning,\u201d the poster read, cautioning shopkeepers on the highway between Srinagar and Jammu, another key city, against sheltering government forces.<\/p>\n
Such missives were once common from local and Pakistan-backed armed groups at the height of the region\u2019s movement to break from Indian control in the 1990s and the early 2000s.<\/p>\n
But after the Indian government revoked Kashmir\u2019s special status, scrapped its statehood, and split the area into two federally ruled territories in August 2019, such posters have been less common \u2013 and armed violence has fallen, too. Armed attacks came down from 597 in 2018 to 145 in 2025, according to the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP), a platform that tracks and analyses attacks in South Asia.<\/p>\n
The emergence of the pamphlet set off a three-week manhunt spanning Kashmir and multiple Indian regions. It was this investigation, say officials, that connected the threads between multiple individuals plotting an attack \u2013 including a doctor believed to have been driving the car that exploded on a packed street junction in New Delhi on Monday, barely metres (a few feet) from the ramparts of the Red Fort, a famous Mughal-era monument.<\/p>\n
The case and its coverage in large parts of the Indian media have also prompted a wave of Islamophobia and anti-Kashmiri sentiment.<\/p>\n
The scholar and the doctors<\/h2>\n
As security officials looked to track the source of the pamphlet in Nowgam, they zeroed in on clips from CCTVs. Based on what they saw, they \u201cpicked up a couple of suspects, among whom was a Muslim scholar from the Shopian district of South Kashmir\u201d, a police official based in Kashmir told Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity as he wasn\u2019t authorised to talk to the media.<\/p>\n
The 24-year-old scholar, Irfan Ahmad, preached at a local mosque in Srinagar where the posters had appeared.<\/p>\n
His interrogation led police to another name: Adeel Rather, a doctor living in Wanpora village, Kulgam, 20km (12 miles) away.<\/p>\n
But when police reached Rather\u2019s house, he wasn\u2019t there. They eventually traced and arrested him some 500km (300 miles) away in the dusty town of Saharanpur in the state of Uttar Pradesh, where Rather was working at a private hospital.\u00a0 The police claim they also found an assault rifle in his locker in Government Medical College Anantnag, in Kashmir, where he worked until October 2024.<\/p>\n
When Rather was questioned, he named another associate: Muzammil Shakeel Ganai, yet another Kashmiri doctor working in Al-Falah University in Faridabad, one of the key satellite cities around New Delhi.<\/p>\n
Indian police claim that when they raided two homes rented in Ganai\u2019s name in Faridabad,<\/strong> they recovered incendiary chemicals and weaponry weighing 2,900kg (6,400lb).<\/p>\n These arrests, Indian police in Kashmir claim, have helped them unearth what they describe as a \u201ctransnational terror module\u201d linked to Jaish-e-Muhammad and Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind (AGuH), another proscribed fighter outfit linked to al-Qaeda.<\/p>\n AGuH was founded in Kashmir by Zakir Rashid, a local fighter commander who was shot by government forces in May 2019. Although its activities have since quietened, Indian police claim that the group has been revived by new leaders from neighbouring Pakistan.<\/p>\n \u201cIn a major counterterrorism success, Jammu and Kashmir police have busted an inter-state and transactional terror module,\u201d police said in a statement.<\/p>\n \u201cDuring the ongoing investigation, searches were conducted at multiple locations by Jammu and Kashmir police,\u201d the statement read. It also said that seven accused were arrested from different locations, including Ganai and Rather, the doctors; Ahmed, the scholar; and four other people.<\/p>\n Those others include a woman from Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh state.<\/p>\n But officials say their investigations also led them to another Kashmiri doctor, Umar Nabi.<\/p>\n Before they could arrest Nabi, though, the Indian capital was rocked by Monday\u2019s explosion. Driving the white sports car laden with explosives, say investigators, was 29-year-old Nabi.<\/p>\n CCTV recordings from New Delhi released by police show a young man in a black mask driving the Hyundai hatchback passing through a toll booth in Delhi. Another clip reveals the same vehicle moving slowly through the traffic-clogged junction before a yellow flash of light appears on the screen.<\/p>\n Amid a nationwide security alert following the explosion, police have launched a crackdown across parts of Kashmir. On November 12, heavily armoured police and members of the paramilitary roamed the streets in Srinagar, pushing their way into homes for searches.<\/p>\n In the Kulgam district of South Kashmir alone, security forces conducted 400 search operations, rounding up about 500 people for questioning. Similar raids were reported from the districts of\u00a0 Baramulla, Handwara, Sopore, Kulgam, Pulwama and Awantipora.<\/p>\n In Koil village of south Kashmir\u2019s Pulwama district, the family of Nabi \u2013 the alleged driver of the car that exploded \u2013 is in shock.<\/p>\n \u201cOn Monday evening, police took away my brother-in-law and then my husband,\u201d said Nabi\u2019s sister-in-law, Muzamil Akhtar. \u201cWe were taken aback when we saw the media and police here; we did not know anything.\u201d<\/p>\n She said police had also taken away Nabi\u2019s mother for DNA sampling.<\/p>\n \u201cOur whole house was thoroughly searched. I spoke to Umar last week on Friday. He was normal and told me he would be coming home after three days. We were all excited about his visit. We did not expect any of this,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Relatives described Nabi as an exceptional student in his school and medical college in Srinagar. One relative said the family used to look upon Umar with pride for his achievements.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was always carrying a book in his hand. He was always reading and engrossed in books. He was our hope,\u201d the relative said through the blur of tears, requesting anonymity. \u201cHe was a calm person.\u201d<\/p>\n Less than a kilometre (half a mile) from Nabi\u2019s home, there is an eerie silence at the home of Ganai, the doctor arrested in Faridabad.<\/p>\n His father, Shakeel Ganai, told Al Jazeera they were informed by the police on Tuesday that their son had been brought to Kashmir from Faridabad for questioning.<\/p>\n \u201cWe did not know what was happening; we had no idea about any of this,\u201d Shakeel said.<\/p>\n Ganai studied at a local school in Koil village and later cleared the competitive exam for a degree in medicine from Jammu. He also pursued a master\u2019s course in medicine from Sher-e-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences (SKIMS) in Srinagar and later joined Al-Falah University in Faridabad, where he had been working for two years.<\/p>\n \u201cHe visited home in July when I went through a kidney surgery. We would talk to him almost every day,\u201d Shakeel, the father, said, adding that police searched their house and detained his other son as well.<\/p>\n Ganai\u2019s sister, who is also studying medicine and was scheduled to be married in November, said the case should be properly probed.<\/p>\n \u201cMy brother worked hard his whole life. He was very ambitious. We cannot believe he is involved in this,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n But even as investigations continue, Islamophobia and anti-Kashmiri sentiments have swept several urban communities around India.<\/p>\n On November 12, police in the Indian city of Gurgaon called up housing societies to compile a list of the Kashmiri residents living among them, causing a sense of panic.<\/p>\n Social media sites in India have in recent days been inundated with calls for violence against Kashmiris, with some users also pledging to evict Kashmiri tenants living in cities like Delhi and Noida.<\/p>\n Nasir Khuehami, a student activist from Kashmir, said about 150,000 Kashmiri students are studying in different parts of India. \u201cThey are currently plagued by the thoughts of safety and security,\u201d Khuehami said.<\/p>\n The explosion and investigations into it have also raised new questions about India\u2019s approach to Kashmir and fighting armed groups, say experts.<\/p>\n Earlier this year, Amit Shah, India\u2019s home minister, had boasted about how there was now \u201czero recruitment\u201d into the ranks of armed rebels in Indian-administered Kashmir. In a speech in Parliament, he said all fighters killed by government forces in Kashmir in the first half of 2025 were foreigners.<\/p>\n But experts now believe such statements were misleading.<\/p>\n \u201cThere will never be an absolute certainty that the recruitment has come to an end,\u201d said Ajai Sahni, executive director of the Institute for Conflict Management in New Delhi. \u201cThese doctors were colleagues who appeared to have been bound by common beliefs or by personal friendships. I would not call it recruitment but mobilisation.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Twenty-six days before a huge blast ripped through a crowded thoroughfare in Delhi, killing 13 people, a pamphlet with a green letterhead had appeared in Nowgam, a staid neighbourhood of cinder-block homes and rutted streets on the outskirts of Srinagar, Indian-administered Kashmir\u2019s main city. Drafted in broken Urdu, the letter proclaimed affiliation with Jaish-e-Muhammad, a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1971,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1970"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1970\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Investigators](\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/AP25315152824191-1763024945.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C513&quality=80\")
\u2018Transactional terror module busted\u2019<\/h2>\n
![\"Family](\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/AP25315139136622-1763027307.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C513&quality=80\")
\u2018Crackdown across Kashmir\u2019<\/h2>\n
![\"An](\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/AP25316338088025-1763027439.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C513&quality=80\")
\u2018Lists of Kashmiri residents\u2019<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"