The Faridabad File

The Delhi bomb blast underscores how deeply Pakistan’s intelligence networks have infiltrated India’s institutions under the cloak of academia.

The deadly car blast near Delhi’s Red Fort that killed thirteen persons and injured over thirty others exposes a new mutation in India’s fight against terror. While the trail leads to Jaish-e-Mohammed, the Pakistan-based militant group long synonymous with terror strikes in India, the probe has revealed a more insidious convergence of academia and ideology.

In the joint operation carried out by the Jammu and Kashmir and Haryana police teams, officers raided a warehouse in Faridabad and discovered 360 kg of explosives alongside a cache of sophisticated weapons. The property had been rented by Dr. Mujammil Shakeel, a physician with no prior criminal record. A separate search in Fatehpur Taga uncovered something even more alarming: over 25 tonnes of explosive material, stored in industrial quantities.

The network came to light after the arrest of Dr. Adil Ahmad, another physician, from Anantnag, who had been working quietly at a private hospital in Saharanpur. His interrogation exposed links to Jaish-e-Mohammed. An AK-47 rifle was found concealed in his hospital locker. When investigators began connecting the dots, the threads pointed back to Al-Falah University in Faridabad, an institution once known for its medical and engineering faculties.

Breeding ground

At the heart of the investigation is the allegation that elements within Al-Falah had become a breeding ground for radicalisation. Dr. Shakeel and another doctor, Shaheen, were both associated with the university. The latter’s car, found packed with advanced weaponry and an assault rifle, was allegedly used in an attempt to establish Jaish’s first female operational cell in India - a project once floated by Masoor Ahmad, a senior figure in the group.

Meanwhile, police raids on the residence of Dr. Ahmad Mohiuddin Sayed, who headed a department at the same university, yielded vials of the lethal toxin ricin. More potent than cyanide, ricin has long been studied as a potential biological weapon.

In Gujarat, the state’s Anti-Terrorism Squad recently detained three individuals with ISIS links. One of them, again, was a doctor. Such cases reflect a disturbing transformation in the profile of Indian extremists. The traditional image of the impoverished, uneducated militant is increasingly giving way to an educated, well-placed and professionally skilled terrorist.

This intellectualisation of jihad is neither accidental nor spontaneous. Security analysts see the fingerprints of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), which for decades has combined covert operations with psychological warfare. The agency’s strategic logic is simple: a radicalised elite class, especially within technical or medical institutions, can amplify the reach of extremism under the cover of respectability.

The Delhi blast itself bore traces of professional planning. The man who perished in the explosion was identified as Dr Umar, another alumnus of Al-Falah University. Witnesses recall that his car, parked near the Red Fort for hours, detonated shortly after leaving the site, leading investigators to suspect that the blast may have been triggered intentionally to erase evidence of the explosives inside.

For India’s counter-terrorism agencies, these discoveries have forced a reckoning. The rapid coordination between the Delhi, Haryana, and Jammu & Kashmir police in the days following the blast has already been praised as among the most seamless intelligence integrations since Operation Sindoor, which was conducted in retaliation to the Pahalgam strike earlier this year. Yet, the Faridabad case worryingly points to terror networks quietly incubating within the country’s own classrooms, clinics and research laboratories.

The parallels with earlier waves of terror are unmistakable. Between 2005 and 2013, India endured a grim series of serial bombings that prompted the U.S. State Department to issue travel warnings. Those attacks, too, bore the hallmark of coordinated planning and cross-border financing. The current resurgence, analysts fear, could mark the return of a familiar pattern in which local recruits act as the operational arm of a foreign intelligence design.

The digital footprints are telling. Taliban-linked commentators such as Haider Hashmi and Burhanuddin, writing on social media, circulated screenshots of Pakistani users openly celebrating the Delhi blast. “Everyone knows where the terrorists’ dens are,” one post declared in a sardonic reminder of Pakistan’s long-denied complicity.

From Bhutan, Prime Minister Narendra Modi voiced sorrow and steely resolve. “The horrific incident that took place in Delhi yesterday evening has saddened everyone,” he said. “The conspirators behind it will not be spared.” His words echoed those uttered after the deadly Pulwama attack of 2019.

While the Indian government will no doubt give a fitting reply to this latest outrage, the deeper lesson from the blast is that India’s enemies are no longer on the periphery; they are now drawing recruits from the country’s classrooms, laboratories and hospitals.