The terror group involved in the November 10 blast near Delhi’s Red Fort that killed 11 persons aimed to overthrow the Indian government and impose Sharia, or Islamic law, in the country, the National Investigation Agency alleged on Thursday.
The blast near the Red Fort metro station had also left several persons injured. Umar Un Nabi, a doctor, is believed to have been driving the car that exploded. Two days after the explosion, the Union government had described it as a “terrorist incident”.
On Thursday, the agency filed a chargesheet in a Delhi court against 10 persons accused in the case. Besides Nabi, the nine others named in the chargesheet are Aamir Rashid Mir, Jasir Bilal Wani, Muzamil Shakeel, Adeel Ahmed Rather, Shaheen Saeed, Mufti Irfan Ahmad Wagay, Soyab, Bilal Naseer Malla and Yasir Ahmad Dar.
The identity of Nabi, who was killed in the blast, had been established through DNA fingerprinting.
The NIA alleged that all of them, including Nabi, the alleged main perpetrator, were linked to terror group Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind, an offshoot of Al Qaida in the Indian Subcontinent. Al Qaida in the Indian Subcontinent and its units were designated terror organisations in India in June 2018.
The persons accused in the blast case have been charged under the 1967 Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, the 1908 Explosive Substances Act, 1959 Arms Act and the 1984 Prevention of Damage to Public Property Act.
The chargesheet is based on investigations carried out in Jammu and Kashmir, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat and the Delhi-National Capital Region, the agency said. The evidence against the persons accused in the matter includes more than 580 verbal testimonies, more than 390 documents and over 200 material that had been seized during searches, it added.
Hours before the blast on November 10, the police said that it had cracked an “inter-state and transnational terror module” in Haryana’s Faridabad and Saharanpur, Uttar Pradesh.
The police had said at the time that they had recovered 2,900 kg of improvised explosive device-making material in raids in several states.
On Thursday, the National Investigation Agency stated that it had “unravelled a major jehadi conspiracy”.
It alleged that the persons accused in the matter had been inspired by the ideology of the terror outfits to carry out the attack. In 2022, the persons had reconstituted the Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind as “AGuH Interim” following a failed attempt to migrate to Afghanistan through Turkey.
“Under the umbrella of the newly constituted outfit, they had launched ‘Operation Heavenly Hind’ aimed at overthrowing the democratically established Indian government and imposing Sharia rule,” the agency alleged in a statement.
The National Investigation Agency stated that its probe had revealed that the accused had recruited new members, “actively propagated the violent jehadi ideology of AGuH”, stockpiled weapons and manufactured explosives on a large scale using chemicals that are commercially available.
They had plans to expand their operations in other parts of the country, the agency alleged.
The agency said that its probe had also found that the persons accused in the case had also been allegedly involved in illegally procuring prohibited weapons, including an AK-47 rifle, a Krinkov rifle and country-made pistols with live ammunition.
“They had experimented with rocket and drone-mounted IEDs [improvised explosive devices] with the objective of targeting security establishments in the state of Jammu & Kashmir and other parts of India,” the agency alleged.
The National Investigation Agency added that it was trying to track other persons whose role in alleged terror activities had been found during the probe.
Written by Nachiket Deuskar. Edited by Tanya Shrivastava
|
