Video Shows Impact Of Blast At J&K Police Station. Bodies Found 300 Metres Away

An accidental blast at a police station in Nowgam on the outskirts of Jammu and Kashmir's Srinagar killed nine people and injured 32 others on Friday night.

The blast occurred when the police and forensic team officials were extracting samples from a large cache of explosives seized in connection with the 'white-collar' terror module case from Haryana's Faridabad recently.

CCTV footage from a nearby house showed the impact of the explosion, which left a trail of destruction.

Another video showed fire crews battling flames as heavy smoke rose from the blast site. Massive debris was also seen on the ground, with multiple vehicles on fire. Body parts were reportedly thrown in neighbouring houses about 300 metres away.

Some residents more than 15 kilometres away also said they felt the explosion.

"Owing to the unstable and sensitive nature of the recovery, it was being handled with utmost caution. However, during the same, an accidental explosion took place at about 11:20 PM on Friday. Any other speculation into the cause of this incident is unnecessary," Jammu and Kashmir Director General of Police (DGP) Nalin Prabhat told reporters.

The Nowgam police station recently cracked the case of the terror outfit Jaish-e-Mohammed's posters in various locations of the area.

While some of the explosives recovered from Faridabad were kept at the forensic lab of the police, the major part of the explosives was stored at the police station.

"White Collar" Terror Module

The Jammu and Kashmir Police on Monday afternoon said it cracked an inter-state and transnational "white collar" terror module, linked to at least two banned terrorist organisations – the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed and the Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind, an al-Qaeda affiliated terror group that is active across the union territory.

It said it also seized 2,900 kilograms of explosive substances and arrested eight people, including three doctors – Adeel Ahmad Rather, Muzammil Shakeel, and Shaheen Saeed – linked to Al-Falah University in Faridabad.

Hours later, an explosion occurred in a car at a red light near the iconic Red Fort in Delhi, killing 13 people and injuring more than 20 others.

The next morning, the name of another doctor from Jammu and Kashmir, Umar Nabi, emerged, with sources saying that he was driving the Hyundai i20 car that exploded.

Sources in the National Investigation Agency (NIA), which is probing the “terrorist incident”, said the seizure of the chemical used in bomb-making may have triggered a panic situation for the suspect and compelled him to relocate.