A police station at the nucleus of the “white-collar terror module” probe was torn apart on Friday night by an “accidental blast” that killed nine people and left behind a heap of rubble, twisted metal, mutilated bodies and scattered fragments of flesh.
The explosion — possibly caused by the mishandling of explosives seized from the module’s base in Faridabad — occurred in the middle of a bustling middle-class locality in Nowgam on Srinagar’s outskirts, and damaged surrounding homes. It left 32 people injured.
The incident came as a double blow to the police. They had to manage the immediate chaos while simultaneously countering speculation that this was the militants’ revenge on the security agencies for blowing up the Pulwama home of the alleged Delhi bomber, Dr Umar un Nabi.
Security experts said the back-to-back explosions — the November 10 Red Fort car bombing that killed 13 people and the Nowgam blast — marked a sad end to one of the most successful counter-militancy operations in recent times.
“You have nearly two dozen people dead, one apparently because of a suicide bomber and the other possibly because of the mishandling of the recovered explosives,” a former police officer said.
“It’s an instance of a clean operation going horribly wrong at the eleventh hour.”
The Red Fort bombing came hours after the security agencies had announced the dismantling of the “white-collar terror module” following a series of arrests across three states and the seizure of an arsenal of weaponry, including 3,000kg of “bomb-making material”.
The militant group Peoples Anti-Fascist Front, described as a proxy for the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed with which the “white-collar” module was allegedly linked, claimed responsibility for the “attack”. But the police dismissed the claim as “false and mischievous”.
In Delhi, Union home ministry sources backed the police’s claim of an accidental blast and said its cause was being ascertained. Jammu and Kashmir lieutenant governor Manoj Sinha said he had ordered a probe into the “accidental explosion”.
The police said the dead included a State Investigation Agency (police intelligence) officer, three policemen-cum-forensic experts, two crime branch officers, two revenue officials and a local tailor. The injured include 27 policemen, two revenue officials and three civilians.
Jammu and Kashmir director-general of police (DGP) Nalin Prabhat had to convene an early-morning news conference to rebut the reports of sabotage.
The media interaction, the DGP’s first since taking over as the police chief last year, lasted barely three minutes. He read out a statement and took no questions.
Prabhat said the huge cache of explosives, reagents and other chemicals seized on November 9 and 10 from the terror module’s Faridabad safe houses had been stored securely in an open area at the Nowgam police station.
“As part of the prescribed procedure, the samples of the recovery had to be forwarded for further forensic and chemical examinations. On account of voluminous recovery, the said procedure was going on for two days by the FSL (forensic science laboratory) team,” he said.
“Owing to the unstable and sensitive nature of the recovery, it was being handled with utmost caution. However, during the same, an accidental explosion took place at about 11.20pm (on Friday). Any other speculation into the cause of this incident (is) unnecessary.”
Officials said a portion of the recovered explosives had been kept in a large shed adjoining the main police building. The shed was flattened and two other buildings on the compound suffered extensive damage.
The blast was so powerful that scores of houses surrounding the compound suffered damage. Eyewitnesses said amputated bodies and burnt body parts lay strewn inside and outside the police station, some more than 100 metres away.
The Telegraph found the neighbourhood littered with shards of glass. Among the injured were several residents, wounded not by the blast itself but by the shower of broken glass and other objects.
The devastation lent the police station a haunted look, with damaged cars piled on one another.
All the dead are local people. The police identified them as inspector Asrar-ul-Haq; selection grade constables Javaid Mansoor Rather and Arshid Ahmad Shah (both were crime branch photographers); selection grade constable Afzal Ahmad Mir and constables Mohammad Amin Malik and Showkat Ahmad Bhat (all three were forensic experts).
Revenue officials naib tehsildar Muzaffar Ahmad Khan and chowkidar Suhail Ahmad Rather, and tailor Mohammad Shafi Parrey were the other three killed. The police had called the tailor to stitch bags for storing the explosives.
People chanted angry slogans saying the tailor was the sole breadwinner of his family.
Mohammad Idrees, who received an injury just below an eye, said the blast felt like an earthquake. His home, damaged by the blast, shares a wall with the police station.
“I was jolted out of sleep by a massive blast. Pieces of glass came raining on my face. Before I realised what had happened, I saw a ball of fire leaping out of the police station,” Idrees said.
“That our home didn’t catch fire is a miracle, although there’s been a lot of damage. Body parts of policemen lay scattered on our compound. A head was recovered around 100 metres away.”
Residents’ anger
People were angry that such a mountain of explosives had been stored in a police station bang in the middle of a congested area.
“The police station was originally a residential building. We had long petitioned the courts to have it shifted to some other place,” a man said.
“The explosions were heard from more than 10km away. Just imagine what could have happened here.”
Local people said they had initially feared there wouldn’t be any survivors inside the police station and dared not step out of their homes for some time. A resident said that fire tenders had arrived around an hour later.
“By then, some local people had helped shift the injured policemen to hospital,” another neighbourhood resident said.
The police had placed barricades at multiple places around the station to keep out visitors.
Sources said the key officers who cracked the case, including the station house officer, had survived the blast.