India carries out sweeping raids, mass arrests in Kashmir after New Delhi car explosion

Indian security forces have detained hundreds in India-administered Kashmir and carried out sweeping raids as part of their “investigation” into this week’s deadly car explosion in New Delhi, officials said.

The blast occurred on Monday near the historic Red Fort monument of New Delhi, killing eight people and wounding several others.

India's government confirmed on Wednesday that it was treating a car blast as a "terror incident" and vowed to bring the perpetrators to justice as swiftly as possible.

In a resolution, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's cabinet said:

"The country has witnessed a heinous terror incident, perpetrated by anti-national forces, through a car explosion."

"The cabinet directs that the investigation into the incident be pursued with the utmost urgency and professionalism so that the perpetrators, their collaborators, and their sponsors are identified and brought to justice without delay."

Over 1,000 people have been detained in sweeping raids, and several hundred houses have been raided in India-administered Kashmir.

Most of the houses raided belong to relatives of people already arrested, serving detentions in various jails, or labelled as “anti-India activists”.

Arrests before the Delhi blast

Monday’s blast came hours after police in India-administered Kashmir said they had arrested at least seven people, including three doctors, and seized weapons and a large quantity of bomb-making material in Faridabad, a city in Haryana state, which is near New Delhi.

Indian news outlets jumped the gun and reported the explosion could be linked to the arrested Kashmiri doctors, even though police have not commented.

Four police officers in Kashmir familiar with the case said the investigation that led them to the Kashmiri doctors began with a routine probe into anti-India posters that appeared in a neighbourhood in the Kashmir city of Srinagar on October 19.

The officers, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case, told AP that CCTV footage helped identify suspects, initially leading to the arrest of at least three people.

Over the following three weeks, interrogations led to the detention of two Kashmiri doctors working in two Indian cities, as well as two other suspects from Kashmir, the officers said.

After the blast

Indian news outlets have reported that police are investigating whether another suspected member, also a Kashmiri doctor, Dr Umer, teaching at a medical college in Faridabad, was driving the car that exploded.

Police have not confirmed those reports, but Indian news outlets claimed the doctor may have either deliberately triggered the blast to avoid arrest or been transporting explosives that detonated accidentally.

Shagufta Jan, the doctor’s sister-in-law in Kashmir’s Pulwama district, said the family had not heard from him since last Friday, when she told him police were looking for him.

“He called us on Friday, and I told him to come home. He said he would come after three days,” she said.

“That was the last time we spoke with him,” Jan said, adding that police came to their home Monday night and took in the doctor’s mother and two brothers for questioning.

Intimidation

Mehbooba Mufti, a former chief minister of India-administered Kashmir, however, warned against “intimidation of Kashmiris in the name of investigation”.

"Just consider this investigation as an investigation. Even if no one's crime has been proven yet, you are arresting mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters based on suspicion. You are dragging them. This should not happen like this.”

Rights groups have often criticised the Indian police’s sweeping powers in Kashmir and also warned against the “hate propagated against” Kashmiri Muslims by the Indian media, which often leads to mob attacks in Indian cities against Kashmiri students and businessmen.

Kashmir

Kashmir has remained at the heart of a decades-long dispute between nuclear-armed neighbours India and Pakistan, both of which claim the territory in full but control separate parts.

Armed resistance to New Delhi's rule began in 1989 in India-administered Kashmir, where many Muslim residents support independence or a merger with Pakistan.

India, which has stationed more than 700,000 troops in Kashmir, accuses Pakistan of fuelling the insurgency. Islamabad denies the allegations and says it only extends political, moral, and diplomatic support to Kashmiris.

Kashmiris widely view the armed revolt as a legitimate freedom struggle.

The conflict has claimed tens of thousands of lives, including civilians, fighters, and Indian troops, over nearly eight decades.

The UN has passed several resolutions advocating for a plebiscite in the region.

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Source: TRT