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COVER STORY NOVEMBER 28, 2025 | The Indian Eye 4

INDIA’S CHALLENGE

THE ENEMY

WITHIN

India confronts a chilling new reality as educated professionals from Kashmir and
other parts of the country emerge at the center of terror attacks.

OUR BUREAU the old images of militancy.
As NIA teams worked across
New Delhi / Srinagar
Delhi, Jammu and Kashmir, Uttar
he November 10 suicide blast Pradesh, and Haryana, they encoun-
outside Delhi’s Red Fort — a tered an ecosystem of encrypted
Tfiery explosion inside a moving channels, carefully coordinated move-
Hyundai i20 that killed 15 people and ments, and personal networks built
injured more than two dozen — has over years. This was not an impulsive
become a defining moment for India’s act carried out by impressionable
internal security establishment. It youth. It was a structured, ideologically
wasn’t merely the scale of the attack, driven operation — its members edu-
nor the location, nor even the ruth- cated, mobile, and socially integrated.
lessness of its execution. It was the This is the unsettling truth that
identity of those behind it. For years, India now confronts.
security agencies warned of a shifting Hidden in Plain Sight
trend in homegrown extremism. Now,
with the Red Fort attack, that shift has ith the arrests came a wave
arrived with terrifying clarity. of scrutiny over the institu-
The men at the center of the Wtions and environments that
bombing are not faceless infiltrators shaped the accused. One name sur-
crossing mountain passes under cover faced repeatedly: Al-Falah University
of darkness. They are doctors, schol- in Faridabad. The suicide bomber, Dr.
ars, clerics, and professionals who Umar Un Nabi, had worked there as
studied, taught, healed, and worked an Assistant Professor. This was not
within India’s mainstream social fab- the first time the university found it-
ric. The suicide bomber himself — lat- self mentioned in the same breath as
er identified through forensic analysis terrorism.
— was not a hardened militant hiding Intelligence inputs revealed that
for years in the shadows. He was an years earlier, another alumnus, Mir-
Assistant Professor of General Medi- za Shadab Beg, had become a key
cine at a private university in Haryana. figure in the Indian Mujahideen. An
This is the new face of terror in India. engineering graduate from the same
This is the enemy within. institution, he was linked to the 2008
The National Investigation Agen- Ahmedabad and Jaipur bombings,
cy (NIA), which took over the case a the Udupi explosives procurement,
day after the blast, has made six arrests and the Gorakhpur serial blasts. He
so far. The first two included the man Dr Muzammil Shakeel Ganai of Pulwama (J&K), Dr Adeel Ahmed Rather of Anantnag (J&K), Dr remains absconding, believed to be
in whose name the car was purchased Shaheen Saeed of Lucknow (U.P.), and Mufti Irfan Ahmad Wagay of Shopian (J&K), who was somewhere in Afghanistan.
and a technical facilitator. But it was arrested by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in connection with Delhi blast case, being As the Red Fort blast brought
the next set of arrests that jolted the Al-Falah back under the scanner, a
nation: Dr. Muzammil Shakeel Ganai brought to Patiala House Court, in New Delhi on Thursday. (ANI Photo) parallel investigation by the Enforce-
of Pulwama, Dr. Adeel Ahmed Rath- ment Directorate unearthed a web of
er of Anantnag, Dr. Shaheen Saeed of and produced before the Special NIA these profiles — physicians, academ- alleged accreditation fraud and mon-
Lucknow, and cleric Mufti Irfan Ah- Court in Patiala House, where they ics, a mufti — pointed to a new and ey laundering linked to the universi-
mad Wagay of Shopian. were remanded to ten days of custody. more deeply embedded pattern of ty’s administration. The arrest of the
All four were arrested in Srinagar For investigators, the implications of radicalization, one that no longer fits Continued on next page... >>

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