The Plot Against India

 DESPITE NOT BEING distant from the busy city of Faridabad, village Dhauj is not very accessible. Located in a fold of the Aravalli range, the village in Haryana’s Mewat has a dubious reputation for having been a hub of cattle smugglers and illegal beef trade. All five individuals convicted in the 2010 abduction and gang rape of a BPO employee in Delhi were reportedly cattle smugglers. They were roaming the streets of the capital late at night when they came across the victim, who had been dropped off by her office cab at Moti Bagh on the night of November 23-24. The pictures of the mid-sized truck used during the crime were typical of vehicles used by the cattle mafia to pick up stray cattle or milch animals tethered outside the residences of Delhi’s numerous urban villages.

Illegal stone quarrying and cattle smuggling have been the mainstay trades in Mewat, an area which spills over into Rajasthan’s Alwar district and despite improvements in road connectivity, utilities, health and education, remains a backwater. The rocky and forested area is home to mafias with Jamtara-type cy­ber scams being the latest addition. Home to Meos, a Muslim community engaged in farming and animal husbandry, Mewat has been a communal tinderbox too. As recently as July 31, 2023, the annual “jalabhishek yatra (ritual pouring of water)” procession, that included women and children and was headed for the Na­lhar Mahadev temple in Nuh, was set upon by armed rioters who had assembled in strength. The violence spread to some Gurugram areas and police later found evidence of stones and glass bottles being stocked for use during the rioting. In a revealing act, the attackers targeted a cyber cell police station, ramming a bus into it and attempting to pull it down. The bid to destroy records relating to cyber crimes failed and investigations revealed Rohingyas were part of the mobs with planners using WhatsApp group messages to organise violence. Hindu pilgrims who fled into the Nalhar temple to save themselves were fired on from surrounding hills until the police rescued them.

The sensational arrests of a ring of doctors and the deadly sui­cide blast triggered by one member who had evaded the police near Delhi’s Red Fort that killed 13 and injured many others has again placed Dhauj and Mewat under unwelcome spotlight. This time, for an act of terrorism carried out not by illiterate cattle lifters but by white-coated medical professionals trained at government colleges working and teaching at the Al-Falah University spread out over 70 acres of greenery near the Aravalli foothills. The university was set up by the Al-Falah Charitable Trust located in Jamia Nagar, Delhi. Information about the trust is scanty. Online details and a LinkedIn profile name Jawad Ahmad Siddiqui as managing trustee since 1995 and chancellor of the Al-Falah University 2014 onwards when the varsity was notified under the Haryana Private Universities Act. Siddiqui is also named managing director, Al Falah Investments, since 1996. Hailing from Mhow in Madhya Pradesh, details of his family background are only now emerging. Described as an ‘edu­cationist’, Siddiqui has had a few brushes with the law. There is no information on other members of the trust apart from their names.

However, Al-Falah University Vice Chancellor Professor Bhupinder Kaur Anand in a statement said the university is deep­ly shocked and saddened by the unfortunate developments that took place and condemned the same. “Our thoughts and prayers are with all the innocent people affected by these distressing events,” she said, adding that the arrested persons had no con­nections with the university apart from being employees. The university denied its facilities had been used to prepare any ex­plosives. The university did not state when the arrested doctors were hired or the recruitment process.

The terror module that was first tracked by the Jammu & Kash­mir police included three doctors who worked at the Al-Falah Uni­versity medical college and hospital. Dr Muzammil Ganaie and Dr Umar Un Nabi—the latter detonated the car bomb at Red Fort, and in the process, killed himself—are from Pulwama in Kashmir. The third, Dr Shaheen, is from Lucknow, and reported to be in a relation­ship with Ganaie. Another doctor, Adeel Rather, is from Kulgam and was held in Saharanpur, Uttar Pradesh. Both Nabi and Rather studied at Government Medical College, Srinagar, where they met and were radicalised. However, the initiator of terrorist plots is yet not known. But in the company of Ganaie, who rented two rooms at Dhauj from the imam of the mosque in Al-Falah University, the ‘white coat’ module planned to carry out major terror attacks.

The arrests of the doctors, along with a possibly unrelated plot uncovered by the Gujarat police also involving a China-trained doctor, point to a shift in tactics by terror handlers in Pakistan. The Faridabad crew is most directly linked to the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JEM) and the first inkling to their plans came to light after J&K police held three persons for putting up Jaish posters threatening security forces in Srinagar. Unlike in the case of the April 22 attack in Pahalgam, there is no direct involvement of terrorists infiltrat­ed into India from Pakistan. This reduces the rationale for use of military options to strike at targets in Pakistan. The Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), which constantly refines terrorist options to be used against India, has chosen to utilise radicalised Indian citizens for the plots that have now been uncovered. Yet, since terror on the scale being planned by the two modules does not seem possible without the ISI’s sanction, the preparations for major acts of ter­rorism require close analysis. Though the Pakistan military has denied Indian claims of damage to airfields, radars and aircraft, Operation Sindoor inflicted significant pain, and the rubble at ter­ror hubs like the Jaish and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) headquarters at Bahawalpur and Muridke could not be hidden. In fact, local residents testified to the extensive damage to the buildings. In contrast, Pakistan has been singularly unable to present even a shred of evidence about having hit any Indian military facility or a major civilian area, despite having deployed drones and missiles during the May 7-10 conflict.

Any Jaish operation—or even the one uncovered in Ahmedabad that planned the use of the toxin ricin—in­dicates a preparedness of the Pakistan army-ISI complex to raise the stakes with India. The plots demonstrate that radicalisation of Indian Muslims, either through online re­ligious propaganda or by clerics like Shopian-based Maulvi Irfan who is seen as the ‘mentor’ behind the Faridabad gang, provide Pakistan with the recruits needed to stage terror at­tacks. It is possible that the Pakistan military’s bid to avenge the Operation Sindoor humiliation is also partly based on the assessment that India’s ties with the US are currently in flux, while Field Marshal Asim Munir is referred to by President Donald Trump in approving tones. This might be a risky miscal­culation not only for misreading India’s will to punish terrorism but also for anticipating American neutrality over a terrorist incident. Indian security planners are not relying on any active assistance from the US or any other state in the event of India-Pakistan tensions flaring up. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who returned from a visit to Bhutan on November 12, visited the injured at a Delhi hospital and promised that those responsible for the blast will be brought to justice. Home Minister Amit Shah visited the blast site late on November 10 night and has held several meetings to urge all agencies to coordinate closely and unravel the full extent of the conspiracy.

THE J&K AND Faridabad police raids on the rooms rented out by Ganaie revealed a staggering 2,900kg of ammo­nium nitrate, a basic ingredient in manufacturing IED bombs that can be packed into cars or containers, often along with deadly shards and pellets. The arrests of Muzammil and Rather were announced on November 10, but happened around end-October. Just as police personnel felt the worst has been averted, it turned out that Nabi had evaded arrest and had been left to his own devices. Aware that he was possibly India’s most wanted per­son after the arrests of his co-conspirators, he remained untrace­able for several days till he left for Delhi in a Hyundai i20 fitted with explosives on November 10, crossing the border at Badarpur and driving around central parts of the city for hours before sitting it out at a parking lot in Chandni Chowk from a little after 3PM until 6.30PM. Shortly after, possibly frustrated and fearing ap­prehension, the doctor-turned-fidayeen detonated the car bomb near Gate No 1 of the Red Fort Metro station.

The powerful explosion, that gutted several cars and rocked shops 500 metres away, was the first terror incident since a 2012 attack that injured the wife of the Israeli defence attaché after a motorcycle rider attached a sticky bomb to her car. The last major incident in the capital took place in 2011 when a briefcase bomb killed 15 per­sons outside the Delhi High Court with the Indian Mujahideen claiming responsibility. Whether more could have been done to track and nab Nabi after it became clear that he was on the loose is a relevant question, and details of WhatsApp chats between the conspirators could provide some information about his movements and if he was tipped off. His exit from the Al-Falah University campus where he was not seen after October 30 is crucial as a car bomb requires time and expertise to as­semble. The ammonium nitrate was prob­ably mixed with a quantity of high-grade explosive like RDX to form a more potent mixture. The explosive PETN is also used as a trigger to initiate the detonation. The conflagration witnessed in the Red Fort area on November 10 evening clearly points to a powerful explosive.

The trail to the Faridabad ‘white coat’ mod­ule unravelled after Srinagar police began in­vestigating Jaish-e-Mohammed posters that appeared in the city in mid-October. They soon rounded up three known stone pelters and tracked down Irfan, a cleric from Shopian, with a history of being an overground worker for separatist outfits. He had kept a low profile over the past few years but lost none of his radicalising zeal and is believed to have influenced Nabi and Rather. His arrest provides leads to the module’s handlers, at least one who is reported to be based in Türkiye, and their links to the Jaish. With the Opera­tion Sindoor attack on May 7 on Jaish’s Bahawalpur headquarters claiming the lives of 10 of terror leader Masood Azhar’s family, the jihadi group has cause for seeking vengeance.

The quantity of am­monium nitrate stocked up at Dhauj was a precursor to prepara­tions for major strikes intended to cause a high number of deaths. In a seemingly unrelated, but parallel operation, a group of three jihadists planning terrorist acts were held by the Gujarat anti-terror squad a day before the Dhauj stockpile was revealed in the media. The arrests were made on November 9 in Ahmedabad. The main suspect, Ahmed Mohiyuddin, is also a doctor who studied medicine in China. His associates, Suleman and Suhail, carried out reconnaissance and procured arms which were recovered from the trio.

The plot they were hatching was equally deadly. Four li­tres of castor oil and a quantity of castor seeds were recovered from Mohiyuddin, which was part of a plan to make a lethal toxin, ricin, which has been reportedly used by Russian state security agents to assassinate opponents and critics of Kremlin. In May 2020, a Russian diplomat based in Prague was accused of transporting quantities of ricin as part of a plot to murder a high-profile mayor. According to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), ricin is one of the most toxic substances known to man. “Ricin is a naturally occurring protein that is part of the leftover ‘waste mash’ created when beans from the castor plant (Ricinus communis) are processed to make castor oil. Exposure occurs if the bean seeds are eaten; otherwise, exposure must be deliberate. The substance can be made into a powder, mist or pellet as a biological agent for warfare, exposing people through food, water or air.

There is no antidote,” the AAAS blog states. As is evident, processing castor beans for the deadly byproduct may not be too complex. The poison, however, seems more suited to targeted killings rather than mass casualties. Yet, random poisoning of individuals in public places is bound to be very effective in creating panic. The module busted by the Gujarat ATS had been under surveillance for months and was controlled by one Abu Khadija of the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP). Mohiyuddin is from Hyderabad while Suleman and Sohail are from Uttar Pradesh. The weapons recovered from them were allegedly transported across the Pakistan border by drone.

Following the arrests, both conspiracies are being traced in detail and the trails inevitably lead to Pakistan. The Shopian cleric, seen as the motivator behind the Faridabad crew, has a history of extremist associations and the detentions have led to a crack­down on Jamaat sympathisers in Jammu & Kashmir with raids conducted at over 200 places. The Jamaat-e-Islami is a banned or­ganisation in the Union territory, with its members found to have been regularly involved in stone throwing and other separatist activities. The plots and the Red Fort blast bring India’s ‘new nor­mal’ of treating terrorism as an act of war into play. The absence of a direct Pakistan link can see a response other than use of military option that is covert in nature. Over the past three years, several leading jihadists in Pakistan have been killed by persons who have not been named or apprehended. The ‘white coat’ plots point to Pakistan’s activation of sleeper cells and stepped-up efforts to in­doctrinate likely candidates.

From time to time, Pakistan’s military leaders tend to miscal­culate their capacity to inflict harm on India under the impres­sion that retaliation will be either limited or not happen. Pakistan Chief of Army Staff Asim Munir’s current access to the Trump White House might have emboldened him into sanctioning major terror attacks in India. Senior leaders in the Modi govern­ment, such as Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, have repeatedly warned that military adventurism or acts of terror will unerringly invite reprisals. The post-Operation Sindoor learning and gaming exercises conducted by Indian military and intelligence agen­cies to assess future scenarios take into account the US-Pakistan thaw and the possibility of American civil and military presence in Pakistan during any likely hostilities. The actions of the Paki­stan military will, in foreseeable future, keep India and Pakistan just a few steps from Operation Sindoor Stage II.