Red Fort bomber raced to fix rift in terror cell weeks before Delhi blast

Cracks inside the Jaish-e-Mohammed-linked module had begun to show long before the Red Fort car bombing. According to investigators, deep disputes over ideology, finances and the execution of an attack drove prime accused Umar Nabi to skip the early-October wedding of fellow conspirator Adeel Rather.

But when cleric Mufti Irfan Wagay was detained in Kashmir shortly after, Umar rushed back to Qazigund on October 18 in a hurried attempt to mend fences — and to “keep the group on track”, officials were quoted as saying.

Sources said the four men — Umar, Rather, Muzammil Ganai and Wagay — were never in complete agreement. While Rather and the others leaned towards an Al-Qaeda-style doctrine, Umar aligned himself with the ISIS model, aspiring to build a local caliphate and attack what he saw as “nearby enemies”. One source explained: “Al-Qaeda targets Western culture and faraway enemies. ISIS seeks to establish a caliphate and defeat enemies at home.”

Investigators say Umar believed he was destined to carry forward the violent legacies of Burhan Wani and Zakir Moosa in Kashmir, and had been researching IEDs since 2023.

Money became an equally divisive flashpoint. Umar was accused by the group of refusing to account for funds, a major share of which allegedly came from Shaheen Shahid Ansari, a colleague of Ganai at Al Falah University. Ansari is among the arrested.

Three weeks after the Qazigund reconciliation, the terror strike in Delhi unfolded.

The group called itself the “Interim Ansar Ghazwatul Hind”, which security agencies describe as a branch of Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS). Rather was named its “Ameer” or supreme commander. A J&K Police press note dated November 9 described the module as an inter-state and transnational network with links to JeM and AGuH.

Investigators say the breakthrough came after Wagay’s arrest, which led to the recovery of 2,900 kg of IED-making material — chemicals, explosives, reagents, batteries, detonators, timers, wires, electronic circuits and metal sheets. Umar and Ganai held the keys to the Faridabad room where the material was stored, and Umar was believed to have experimented extensively with chemicals.

Much of the seized material was kept at Nowgam Police Station in Kashmir. But during sampling on the fourth day after the Delhi blast, a catastrophic accidental explosion killed nine personnel and injured 27, triggering a high-level inquiry under the Union Territory’s Principal Secretary (Home) and the Inspector General of Police, Kashmir Zone.

As the investigation widens across states and borders, security agencies are attempting to piece together not only the funding and command structure but also the intense internal frictions that nearly splintered the group — until Umar returned to Kashmir to ensure the terror plot stayed alive.