A massive explosion rocked the Nowgam police station – where explosives recovered from the Red Fort blast-linked terror module were stored – in Srinagar late Friday night. While the police are yet to issue an official statement on the scale and cause of the explosion, sources said casualties are feared.
Such was the intensity that the blast could be heard 30 kilometres away. Following the explosion, the police station and several vehicles in the vicinity went up in flames. A large number of ambulances and fire tenders were rushed to the area a little before midnight.
Senior police and security officials also headed to Nowgam, which falls on the outskirts of Srinagar, and roads leading to the area were closed.
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Sources said they are probing whether the explosives stored at the police station exploded during an inspection, which was meant to be carried out in the presence of a magistrate and the Forensic Science Laboratory team that was there to collect samples.
The Nowgam police station is at the centre of the investigation that led to the unravelling of the Jaish-e-Mohammad’s interstate terror module last week. Three doctors of the close-knit module were arrested from Faridabad in Haryana and Saharanpur in Uttar Pradesh, while a fourth, Umar Nabi, got away. He was responsible for the Red Fort blast.
The police station first got involved in October, when some posters related to the Jaish-e-Mohammad cropped up in the area. The probe into a seemingly local issue at first would lead police hundreds of kilometres away from the Valley, exposing the module.
As part of the raids on the accused doctors, police had recovered more than 350 kg of ammonium nitrate. This was part of roughly 2,900 kg of suspected explosive material, which also included potash, phosphorous, reagents, inflammable material, electronic circuits, batteries, wires, remote controls, timers and metal sheets. Police have not said how much of this had been moved to Nowgam.
