Indian police detain suspects in Kashmir after deadly New Delhi car blast

Indian security agencies have detained several suspects in the disputed Kashmir region as part of their investigation into this week’s deadly car explosion in New Delhi, officials have said.

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

Authorities announced on Tuesday that they were investigating the incident as possible terrorism — a step that gives investigating authorities broader powers to arrest or detain people.

Red Fort, a major tourist attraction, is a 17th-century monument and the place where Indian prime ministers deliver Independence Day speeches on August 15 each year.

If confirmed as a deliberate attack, it would be the deadliest blast in India’s capital since 2011.

At least five people were detained for questioning in a series of raids overnight in Kashmir’s southern Pulwama district, police officials said.

Monday’s blast came hours after police in Indian-controlled Kashmir said they had dismantled a suspected militant cell operating from the disputed region to the outskirts of New Delhi. At least seven people, including two doctors, were arrested, and police 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 reported that the explosion could be linked to the same cell. Police have not commented, citing their ongoing investigation.

Four police officers in Kashmir familiar with the case said the investigation that led them to the cell began with routine inquiries into anti-India posters that had appeared in a neighbourhood in the Kashmir city of Srinagar on October 19. The posters threatened attacks on Indian troops stationed in Kashmir.

The officers said 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, in addition to two other suspects from Kashmir, the officers said.

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

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

Delhi police spokesman Sanjay Tyagi said investigators were investigating “all possible angles, including a terror attack, an accidental blast or any kind of failure in the car”.

The possible terrorism link in the blast has raised fears of renewed tensions between nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan. India often accuses Pakistan of backing attacks on its soil, saying they are carried out by groups based across the border.

In April, suspected militants killed 26 people, mostly Hindu tourists, in Indian-controlled Kashmir. New Delhi blamed Pakistan for the massacre, which Islamabad denied. It was followed by tit-for-tat military strikes by India and Pakistan, bringing the nuclear-armed rivals to the brink of their third war over the region.

India and Pakistan each administer a part of Kashmir but both claim the territory in its entirety.

Militants in the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir have been fighting New Delhi’s rule since 1989. India insists the Kashmir militancy is Pakistan-sponsored terrorism. Pakistan denies the charge, and many Kashmiris consider it a legitimate freedom struggle.