Terrorists in India posing as medical professionals may be using staff lockers at hospitals and medical centres to store arms and explosives – like the Hamas in Gaza – raising the worrisome possibility of an advisory, or even operational, link, National Investigation Agency sources told NDTV Friday afternoon.
The anti-terror agency is leading inquiries into the car bomb that exploded outside Delhi’s Red Fort on November 10 and killed 15 people. At least three suspects linked to that attack – Mohammed Shakeel, Adil Ahmad Rather, and Shaheen Saeed – and the terrorist who drove and detonated the ammonium nitrate fuel oil-stuffed Hyundai i20, Umar Mohammad – had cover jobs as doctors.
Shakeel and Mohammad worked at the Al-Falah Hospital in Haryana’s Faridabad, while Rather was employed at the Government Medical College in Jammu and Kashmir’s Anantnag.
And a J&K Police team that raided the GMC found an assault rifle and ammunition in a locker that was allotted to Rather. A second rifle and more ammo was found in a car owned by Saeed.
RECAP | 350 kg Explosives, Rifle Found Near Delhi, 2 J&K Doctors Arrested In 15 Days
That recovery and intel from interrogated suspects alerted the NIA to terrorists’ plans to convert hospitals in Anantnag, Baramulla, and Budgam districts into weapons storage centres, relying on medical facilities as not generally being suspected of links to terrorism and terrorist activity.
The plan, sources said, had grim echoes of weapons being hid in and under major Gaza hospitals.
For example, in June Israeli military claimed to have found a network of Hamas-built tunnels under the Al-Shifa Hospital. The tunnels hid weapons and served as command-and-control centres, they claimed.
VIDEO RECAP | Israel Claims To Have Found Hamas Tunnel Under Gaza Hospital
The 10-member ‘terror doctor’ module behind the Red Fort blast – which intelligence has linked to the Pakistan-based terror group Jaish-e-Mohammed – had similar plans, NIA sources said.
If true, this will mean the operational link between the Pak terror group and the terrorists who conspired and detonated the Red Fort car bomb has expanded, with connections to the Hamas.
Sources said this piece of intelligence emerged when Rather was interrogated.
Adil Rather was the first suspect arrested in the ‘terror doctor’ case after he was identified as the man who put up posters supporting Jaish in J&K’s Nowgam. He was picked up from Uttar Pradesh’s Saharanpur and information he provided was key in exposing the Al-Falah ‘terror doctors’.
The Al-Falah Hospital has become ground zero in this case; on Thursday sources said over 200 men and women employed at the facility are being investigated for possible links to the Red Fort attack or other terror strikes. On Wednesday it emerged that at least 10 such suspects had ‘disappeared’.
The police are trying to track them down, but their phones have been turned off.
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