Delhi blast: 800 km apart, two clerics arrested before and after explosion under common terror trail

Delhi blast

Two clerics, one from Kashmir’s Shopian and another from Haryana’s Faridabad, are among those arrested by the Jammu and Kashmir Police in connection with a terror module now linked to the Red Fort blast.

According to the investigators, while one allegedly indoctrinated members of the group, the other had rented out his premises to a doctor who is accused of storing explosives there.

In Shopian’s Nadigam area, the family and colleagues of cleric Irfan Ahmad Wagay find it hard to believe his arrest. “I have never seen him do anything but pray,” The Indian Express quoted his wife as saying.

Known locally as Mufti Sahab, 24-year-old Wagay was among seven men arrested before the Red Fort blast. The police say the arrests were part of a larger probe into an “inter-state and transnational” terror module linked to banned groups Jaish-e-Mohammad and Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind.

Wagay’s family said he was taken from their home on the night of October 18. “He came home from Srinagar as he always did on weekends. After dinner, we went to bed. Around 11 pm, the police knocked on our door,” his sister Sabi Jaan informed.

The fourth among seven siblings, Wagay studied in a local school until Class 3 before joining a religious seminary in Srinagar. He later went to Deoband to train as a Mufti in 2017-18. His wife Fatima, who is pregnant and has a three-year-old child, said he had been serving as an imam at a mosque in Nowgam, Srinagar, for the past seven years.

Posters, arrests and police trail

On October 19, a day after Wagay’s detention, posters carrying the name of Jaish-e-Mohammad were seen at several locations in Nowgam.

The J&K police investigation gradually widened, leading to the arrest of several others, Arif Nisar Dar, Yasir-ul-Ashraf, and Maqsood Ahmad Dar, all from the same locality where Wagay led prayers. The probe later extended to Anantnag, Ganderbal and Shopian, and then to Haryana and Uttar Pradesh.

Police teams, working with the Haryana and UP Police, arrested three doctors, while another suspect, Umar Nabi, believed to be behind the Red Fort blast, managed to escape.

At the Nowgam mosque, where Wagay worked, mosque committee president Farooq Ahmad said everyone was shocked. “He would go home every Saturday and return on Monday. The search of his room happened three weeks after he was picked up,” Ahmad was quoted by The Indian Express as saying.

Fatima said her husband had never been called for questioning before. “We don’t know any of the other accused. His phone and laptop have been taken away. We went to several police stations, but couldn’t find him,” she said.

A cleric and a rented room in Haryana

Over 800 kilometres away, in Haryana’s Dhauj area near Faridabad, Maulana Ishtiyaq, the cleric, who worked at a mosque inside the Al Falah University campus, was taken by the J&K Police to Srinagar for questioning on Wednesday.

His 17-year-old daughter, the eldest of four children, said their father rented out a room in their home at Fatehpur Taga village to Dr Muzammil Ganai, now one of the key accused in the terror case. Police claim they found explosives during raids on this property earlier this week.

Officials said Ishtiyaq, originally from Mewat, belongs to a family of clerics, with five brothers serving in mosques across Haryana and Rajasthan. The family said they earn a modest income, about Rs 10,000 a month from the university and another Rs 10,000 by selling buffalo milk.

“Our home is simple, just one room and a kitchen. The only phone we had was our father’s, and the police have taken it,” said his daughter.