November 15, 2025e-Paper
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November 15, 2025e-Paper
Updated – November 15, 2025 09:33 am IST
Security personnel at the blast site near the Red Fort in Delhi on November 10, 2025. | Photo Credit: Sushil Kumar Verma
On November 10, at 6:55 p.m., a phone rang at the Delhi Fire Services. The panicked caller told an officer that a blast had occurred in a car in front of the Red Fort. Within minutes, the roads near the high security area were chock-a-block with fire tenders, ambulances, and police vans, recalls the officer, who did not want to be named.
The scene, he remembers, was ghastly. There were shattered glass pieces, dismembered body parts, streaks of blood, and broken vehicle parts on Netaji Subhash Marg, the road leading to the Mughal-era sandstone structure.
Also Read: Delhi blast highlights on November 14, 2025
Dharmender, a resident of Greater Noida, an Uttar Pradesh suburb of Delhi, who had gone to shop in the Chandni Chowk area, recalls what happened. “The traffic was moving really slowly. Suddenly, the sky lit up and there was a loud noise. Those around the car did not even get a chance to attempt an escape. After the blast, we dragged out some seven cab drivers from the area and placed them in e-rickshaws. All I noticed was that the vehicle which had blown up had a Haryana number plate.”
Bhupender Singh, a 55-year-old resident of Noida, who happened to be at the site, says he fled as ambulances carried injured people from the blast site to Lok Nayak Hospital, about 2 kilometres away. His hands still shaking, Singh says he was metres away from the white four-wheeler that blew up. “The traffic light had just turned green when the blast occurred. I rolled out of my vehicle and ran towards the market area on the opposite side,” he says.
Sonu, a guard working at a public toilet in the area, recalls how he watched the scene with horror. He remains scarred at the sight of a limb falling near a Jain temple and a disembodied head landing on the roadside.
The blast took place less than 500 metres away from where Prime Minister Narendra Modi had made his Independence Day speech in August. He had declared that a “new normal” had been established after India’s Operation Sindoor against Pakistan, in response to the terror attack in Pahalgam in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) in April. At the blast in front of Red Fort, officially recognised as a “terror incident” on November 12, at least 13 people died and more than 20 people were injured.
A day later, the Delhi Police registered a First Information Report at the Kotwali police station under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967; the Explosives Substances Act, 1908; and Section 103(1) (punishment for murder), 109(1) (attempt to murder) and 61(2) (criminal conspiracy) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023. The case has been transferred to the National Investigation Agency. So far, the J&K Police have arrested nine suspects in a case registered by them on October 19 and which is now intrinsically linked to the blast.
Hours before the blast, around 50 km away in Haryana, the Faridabad Police Commissioner, Satendra Kumar Gupta, addressed a press conference. He announced that the police, in collaboration with the J&K Police, had recovered 360 kilograms of inflammable material — possibly ammonium nitrate — stuffed into 12 suitcases, an AK-Krinkov rifle, magazines, walkie-talkies, timers, and batteries during a raid at a room at Fatehpur Taga village in Faridabad district. “The recoveries were made from the room where 32-year-old Muzammil Ahmad Ganaie had moved in 15 days ago,” Gupta said. Ganaie is a junior doctor with the emergency wing of the hospital inside the campus of Al Falah University in Dhouj
Later, sources said that the room had been rented by Dr. Ganaie. On October 30, the police arrested Dr. Ganaie from the college.
At the same time, the J&K Police announced through a press release that they had busted an “inter-State and transnational terror module” linked to the Jaish-e-Mohammad and al Qaeda-affiliated Ansar Ghazwat ul Hind. They said seven people, including Dr. Ganaie and another doctor, Adeel Ahmad Rather, who Dr. Ganaie led them to, had been arrested. They also said that they had seized 2,900 kg of improvised explosive-device-making material over 15 days. The police arrested Dr. Rather on November 5 from Saharanpur in Uttar Pradesh, where he was working at a private hospital.
During their investigation following the blast, security agencies found that Dr. Umar ul Nabi — also working in Al Falah “wanted” by the police, missing since October 7, and part of the ‘white collar’ terror module — was at the wheel of the white car that had gone up in flames that day. He died in the incident.
CCTV footage retrieved later showed him entering the national capital from the Badarpur toll plaza in south-east Delhi at 8.04 a.m. on November 10. According to sources, the car was first spotted outside Asian Hospital in Faridabad at around 7:30 a.m. Dr. Nabi left the vehicle between 3:19 p.m. and 6:22 p.m. in the Red Fort parking lot. In the meantime, Dr. Nabi did a recce of several spots across Delhi, such as Kashmere Gate, Sunehri Masjid, and Daryaganj. As he bought the toll ticket wearing a black mask, cameras showed a large bag on the rear seat.
Delhi Police personnel stand guard at the blast site near the Red Fort. | Photo Credit: Sushil Kumar Verma
The security agencies suspect that Dr. Nabi panicked and triggered the bomb in haste as it was not properly assembled. Only a part of his body could be retrieved from the explosive-laden car. It was later matched with the DNA sample of his mother who lives in Pulwama, south Kashmir. Officials say Dr. Nabi appears to be the mastermind of the blast.
Weeks earlier, on October 17, posters printed in Urdu appeared at several places in Srinagar’s Nowgam area. They told local residents not to cooperate with police and security personnel and not give them space to sit in their shops.
These posters piqued the curiosity of a senior officer in J&K’s Criminal Investigation Department (CID) and he asked the local police to investigate them. After looking through CCTV footage, the police arrested three men — Arif Nisar Dar (22), Yasir-ul-Ashraf (19), and Maqsood Ahmad Dar alias Shahid (25). The men told the police they were asked by a local cleric, Irfan Ahmad (24), to paste the posters.
A senior government official says, “When the cleric was questioned, he tried to mislead us and led us to a person from Ganderbal — Zameer Ahmad Ahanger alias Mutlasha, 29. He had a pistol. We arrested him. It was when we looked through the cleric’s phone that we found that he had been in touch with the three doctors: Dr. Ganaie, Dr. Rather, and Dr. Nabi. This raised suspicion. Why would a Class V dropout, who gave religious sermons, be interested in talking to doctors?”
According to the senior government official, the cleric, Ahmad, had been roped in by the doctors to radicalise others. “It was Dr. Ganaie who had asked him to circulate the pamphlets. The cleric had first met Dr. Ganaie in 2023 when he went with someone to a government hospital in Srinagar for treatment,” he says.
The official adds that Dr. Nabi was highly radicalised and convinced Dr. Ganaie that the system should change. “He was upset with the present form of governance and wanted to establish Islamic law. They had been amassing the ammonium nitrate or urea, easily available in the market as fertilizers, over the last six months. The other two doctors [Dr. Ganaie and Dr. Rather] said that they acted on Dr. Nabi’s instructions. He knew when and how the concoction was to be used,” says the official. “As doctors, they knew a fair bit about chemicals and most of the items that they had planned to use for making the bombs had been bought from open markets.”
Another official says that the plan had been in the works for the last two years. “It was to escape scrutiny and create a second base that the doctors, who were working at government hospitals in Kashmir, relocated to private hospitals in Faridabad and Saharanpur,” the official says.
Officials say it was the posters that helped them bust the network, since the doctors had no previous criminal record. “We recovered an AK-56 rifle from the government medical college in Anantnag, where Dr. Rather had worked earlier. He said the weapon was not his. He said it belonged to Dr. Nabi, who had got it from a terrorist in Shopian,” says the official.
On November 8, the J&K Police recovered an AK-Krinkov from the car of another doctor working at Al Falah University — Dr. Shaheen Saeed. Police sources say she was a close friend of Dr. Ganaie and knew that her car was being used by him to ferry explosives. They arrested her and picked up her younger brother, Dr. Parvez Saeed Ansari, from Saharanpur for questioning.
“Initially, we were happy that we had recovered weapons. Only when we raided the rented premises of Dr. Ganaie on November 9-10 did we realise the enormity of the case,” the official says.
On July 30, while briefing Members of Parliament about Operation Mahadev, a joint counter terror effort to kill terrorists responsible for the Pahalgam terror attack, Union Home Minister Amit Shah said in the Rajya Sabha that no local had joined a terrorist group in J&K in the past six -months. He said those being killed in security operations in J&K were all foreigners.
The officials say they are yet to conclusively establish the target of the attack or the planned dates of the terror strikes. “Dr. Nabi had a stellar academic record,” says an official. “He was one of the best doctors in Kashmir. He had ranked first in his medical course. But he was raising funds and was also in touch with their handler in Pakistan.” A press release from the J&K Police on November 10 states, “The group has been using encrypted channels, for indoctrination, coordination, fund movement and logistics. Funds were raised through professional and academic networks, under the guise of social/charitable causes.”
The official adds that the investigation and operation to bust the ‘white collar’ terror module had been initially kept under wraps as Dr. Nabi and others had not been arrested. However, the press conference by the Faridabad Police Commissioner changed things. “We had alerted other States about Dr. Nabi but did not know about the intensity of the case then. The announcement about a press conference had been made a day earlier and it was all over the media. This possibly explains Dr. Nabi’s travails across the city on November 10. We don’t know how many explosives he had,” the official says.
During their investigation, officials found that Dr. Ganaie and his brother had visited the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Turkiye in 2022. That visit is now being scrutinised. They also found that Dr. Rather’s brother, Dr. Muzaffar, whose last known location was the UAE, has been missing since September. They suspect he is in Afghanistan. The J&K Police have issued a red corner notice against him.
On November 11, a day after the blast, Sonu walked through the gates of the mortuary with his eyes glued to his feet. He had come to take away the body of his 23-year-old son, Nouman. “He had come to Delhi with his friend to buy some material for his cosmetic shop in Shamli [Uttar Pradesh],” says Sonu, sobbing. He does not know what happened to Nouman’s friend.
More than 5 km away, a 10-year-old girl kept waiting for her father, Md. Mohsin, to return from work. “Mohsin had called his wife, Sultana, and had informed her that he would be late, but that he wanted to eat dinner with the children,” says Shabeena, Mohsin’s aunt.
In Dhouj, another 10-year-old waited, along with his three siblings and ailing mother, for his father’s return. “My father, Md. Ishtiyaq, was supposed to take me to the eye specialist on Monday after he finished his lunch. But just when he had a bite of some roti, police officers came and took him away,” says the child. The J&K Police arrested Ishtiyaq, the imam at Al Falah mosque, after 360 kg of explosives and ammunition were found at his house in Fatehpur Taga, which he had rented to Dr. Ganaie.
Ishtiyaq’s daughter says he used to receive a salary of ₹10,000 from the Al Falah School of Medical Sciences and Research Centre every month. “Everyone who lives in that area comes to pray in the mosque. Similarly, Dr. Ganaie too would come 2-3 times a week to pray. Sometimes, we sold him buffalo milk. But he never came home,” she says. The girl adds that her father and Dr. Ganaie got in touch when her 7-year-old brother had to undergo an appendix operation in 2024, though he was not the treating doctor.
The Faridabad police scoured through the houses of the residents of Fatehpur Taga, a village 5 km away, where the imam had built a two-room house that he rented out to a couple and to Dr. Ganaie and which had been used to store explosives.
The house in Fatehpur Taga that was rented by Dr. Muzzamil Ganaie where police recovered arms and ammunition. | Photo Credit: Sushil Kumar Verma
Salim, 67, a resident of Fatehpur Taga, says he never saw Dr. Ganaie and the villagers did not know the imam. “Md. Ishtiyaq was not a local. He came from Mewat. He was an imam at the Al Falah mosque in Dhouj. That is all we know; he never socialised with people in this village. The tenants here kept changing,” he says.
For Hazi Madrasi, 85, a resident of Dhouj, renting out his room to the same doctor has cost him dearly. “In September, he [Dr. Ganaie] came to rent a room. He paid me an advance and left,” he says. On September 13, Dr. Ganaie dropped his belongings and never came to stay there, he asserts. Madrasi says he asked Dr. Ganaie for his details, but all he got was a handwritten note which read, “DOCTOR — AL FALAH Rent — 1,200, Advance — Rs. 2,400, paid on 13/11/25.” Dr. Ganaie rented the room for three months, from September 13 to November 13.
After the blast, a few J&K Police personnel came and searched the room and seized Dr. Ganaie’s belongings. “I gave him the room thinking he is a doctor and would be of help during emergencies. Who knew these were his intentions?”
At Al Falah University, students and professors have remained on campus ever since the institution came under the radar of investigators. The samosa and tea stalls are deserted. Security personnel stand everywhere.
A student says she had not seen Dr. Ganaie much. But after seeing his photo, she recalls having seen him in the emergency ward. Another student says Dr. Shaheen Saeed, a senior professor at the university, was reserved but professional. “She always came prepared and was quick to resolve all doubts, in classes and later,” he says.
While investigations continue, recovery for many of the injured is a long road ahead. Shakir, a 35-year-old cab driver, is still in the intensive care unit of the Lok Nayak Hospital. He has incurred several burn injuries in his legs, ears, and face, and suffered a major fracture in his foot. “When Shakir regained consciousness, he first enquired about his passenger,” says his brother, Taufiq. The passenger, Rinki Puniya, a resident of Haridwar, has also been admitted in the same hospital with burn injuries and fractures.
Taufiq says Shakir has not spoken much about that day. “He is not mentally prepared to talk about what he saw,” he says. Given what he went through, “it is a miracle that he is alive.”
vijaita.singh@thehindu.co.in; alisha.d@thehindu.co.in
The story was edited by Radhika Santhanam
Published – November 15, 2025 04:32 am IST
Delhi blast 2025 / Ground Zero / terrorism (crime) / investigation
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