As the probe in the Red Fort car blast case deepens, investigators say the Al Falah University was a long-standing terror hub that produced many terror operatives, including fugitive Indian Mujahideen bomber, Mirza Shadab Baig, who is wanted for a series of explosions in 2008.
The busting of a “white collar terror module” led officials to the Faridabad-based university, which was found to have links with at least four of the accused doctors in the deadly blast outside the Red Fort on November 10 that killed 15 people and injured several others.
Sources said on Friday that Baig, a key Indian Mujahideen (IM) operative accused in the Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Delhi and Gorakhpur blasts, completed his B.Tech in electronics and instrumentation from the university in 2007.
He then disappeared, and has been missing since September 19, 2008 – the day of the Batla House encounter in the national capital – although he is known to have been travelling on his genuine passport.
Agencies believe Baig, a native of Raja Ka Qila Mohalla in Uttar Pradesh’s Azamgarh, was living in Saudi Arabia and was last traced to Afghanistan in 2019.
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Meanwhile, as investigations into the terror module widen, a team of Punjab Police visited the Al Falah campus to question staff members and students about a 45-year-old doctor who was detained from Pathankot recently, and is known to have been teaching at a medical college in Pathankot for three years after having taught at Al Falah University for four years.
The doctor was still in contact with several of his fellow students at Al Falah University, the sources added, even while the Punjab Police team is collecting information about his relationship with Dr. Umar-un-Nabi, the man behind the explosives-laden i20 that detonated outside the Red Fort, as well as other accused.
On Thursday, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) took custody of three doctors and a preacher arrested in connection with the November 10 car blast, taking the total number of people booked in connection with the ‘white collar’ terror plot to six.
Muzammil Ganaie, Adeel Rather and Shaheena Saeed, as well as Maulvi Irfan Ahmed Wagay, had earlier been arrested by the Jammu and Kashmir police.
The NIA, on Friday, also detained the cab driver linked to the case and is questioning him alongside Ganaie, who was brought from Jammu and Kashmir on a production warrant, sources said.
The driver was first detained at Dhauj village, where Al Falah University is situated, on Wednesday night.
Sources said officers recovered from the driver’s house a grinding machine and another electric device, which were kept in his custody by Ganaie, who also provided SIM cards to some students and other associates through the cab driver.
Efforts are underway to determine where the refined explosives found in Ganaie’s room were manufactured.
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