NIA arrests Pulwama man who sourced car for suicide bomber; JeM link under lens

In a major development in the ongoing probe into the Delhi bomb blast case, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Sunday arrested a resident of Pulwama in J&K who had allegedly conspired with the “suicide bomber” to carry out the attack, which claimed 13 lives.

Amir Rashid Ali, in whose name the car involved in the blast was bought, was arrested from Delhi. The NIA took over the probe from the Delhi Police on November 11, a day after the blast, and has since launched a massive search operation.

On the night of November 10 just hours after the blast, the J&K Police had taken several residents of Pulwama district into custody after initial investigations traced the ownership of the vehicle used in the explosion to the region.

Among those detained were three residents of Samboora village in Pulwama -- Amir Rashid Ali (27), Umer Rashid Mir and Tariq Malik (44), who works as a private security guard.

Sources said all three were either directly associated with the car or had connections to Umer, whose identity had been forensically established by the NIA as the driver of the Hyundai i20 car that exploded near Red Fort on November 10.

Nabi was a resident of Pulwama district and an assistant professor in the General Medicine Department of Al Falah University. Investigators said the car’s ownership trail led them to Pulwama after it was discovered that Amir had allegedly provided his Aadhaar card during the vehicle’s purchase. Since then Amir was in police custody, and has now been arrested by the NIA, the sources said.

Meanwhile, according to NIA investigations, Amir Rashid had conspired with the suicide bomber, Umer, to unleash the terror attack.

Amir had come to Delhi to facilitate the purchase of the car which was eventually used as a vehicle-borne Improvised Explosive Device (IED) to trigger the blast, the sources said.

The anti-terror agency has also seized another vehicle belonging to Nabi. The vehicle is being examined for evidence in the case, in which the NIA has so far examined 73 witnesses, including those injured in the blast.

The probe agency is also trying to trace the digital footprints of the arrested members of the “white collar” module allegedly involved in masterminding the terror incident.

The sources said though there were indications of Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) handlers reportedly being behind the plotters, investigators were yet to trace any direct digital proof between the module members and their reported handlers even as arrests had gone up in the aftermath of the incident.

The sustained interrogation of the arrested accused -- Muzammil Ganai, Shaheen Shahid and Adeel Rather -- is currently going on and investigators are trying to extract information about their alleged links to JeM and even handlers based in Turkiye.

Meanwhile, the sources said the NIA was working in close coordination with the police of four states -- Delhi, J&K, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh -- and several other investigative agencies. It was pursuing multiple leads to unearth the larger conspiracy behind the bombing and identify others involved in the case, they added.