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India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi blamed unnamed “conspirators” for a deadly car blast in New Delhi and said the perpetrators would “not be spared”, as investigators probed the attack.
Eight people died in Monday’s explosion near the historic Red Fort in a crowded area of the capital’s old city. The 17th-century Mughal fort is a highly symbolic site used by the prime minister for his annual Independence Day address.
“Our agencies will get to the bottom of this conspiracy,” Modi said on Tuesday from Bhutan during an official visit. “The conspirators behind this will not be spared. All those responsible will be brought to justice.”
Indian security officials confirmed to the Financial Times on Tuesday evening that the case had been handed over to the country’s counterterrorism law enforcement agency.
India’s defence minister Rajnath Singh said that “the findings of the investigation will soon be made public”.
Deputy police commissioner for north Delhi, Raja Banthia, told reporters early on Tuesday that a “first information report” had been registered under anti-terror legislation, implying the blast was not accidental.
“Investigation is at a very preliminary stage, any comment will be too premature. There are many bodies there. There are one or two unidentified bodies. We are in the process of identifying the bodies. Six bodies have been identified,” Banthia added.
Terrorism is a perennial concern in India, which has suffered numerous attacks in recent decades, including several in New Delhi since the mid-1990s. The last major attack in the capital happened in 2011, three years before Modi took office for the first time.
In April, gunmen killed 25 Indians and a Nepali citizen inPahalgam, a tourist hub in India-administered Kashmir, in an attack that spurred cross-border military skirmishes with Pakistan, which India accuses of harbouring terrorists. Islamabad denied involvement in the Pahalgam massacre and in turn accused New Delhi of backing militants in its territory.
Prior to Monday’s explosion, police said they had arrested two people and seized a large cache of explosives and arms in the southern outskirts of New Delhi. Police described this as one of the biggest seizures in the national capital region in recent years.
On Tuesday, police in India-administered Kashmir linked the weapons cache, which they said was seized as part of a joint operation across multiple Indian states, to the Pakistan-based “proscribed terrorist” organisation Jaish-e-Mohammad. Islamabad has denied backing the group.
Pakistan on Tuesday accused India of pursuing “state terrorism” after a suicide bombing killed at least 12 people outside a judicial complex in its capital Islamabad.
The nuclear-armed neighbours have long accused each other of supporting terrorists and separatist groups on their territories and fought a brief but fierce conflict in May after a massacre in India-administered Kashmir.
