With a video of Red Fort bomber Dr Umar Nabi, in which he refers to suicide bombing as a “martyrdom operation“, emerging, investigators probing the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) terror module he was part of told The Indian Express it has been extracted from his own mobile phone.
According to highly placed sources, Umar had handed over the phone to his younger brother, who was picked up by the Jammu and Kashmir police from his Pulwama residence on the night of the Red Fort bombing. His older brother is also in police custody.
“He (the younger brother) had dumped the phone on Umar’s instructions,” said a source. “During questioning, he confessed that his brother handed him the device.”
They said the younger brother then led the police team to a drain, where the phone had been dumped. “It was after strenuous efforts, but we managed to recover the phone,” said a source.
According to sources, after recovering the phone, the police sent it for data extraction. “At least four videos were extracted, including the one that is in public,” the source said. “The videos have been shared with the National Investigation Agency (NIA) and the State Investigation Agency (SIA)”.
According to investigators, Umar’s associates have said during questioning that he was the most radicalised among the close-knit Jaish module and would often broach the subject of suicide bombing.
Apart from Umar, the other members of the terror module are his colleague from Al Falah University, Dr Muzammil Ahmad Ganai; Dr Adeel Majeed Rather, who was employed at a private hospital in Saharanpur; and Dr Shaheen Shahid Ansari, who hails from Lucknow and also worked at Al Falah.
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The three arrested doctors are learnt to have told investigators that they had not picked a target or date for a potential attack, and have indicated that after the module was busted, Umar escaped and acted in haste.
