A day after the deadly blast in Delhi's Red Fort area killed at least 13 people, top security sources have revealed that raids across multiple states led the suspects to act hastily under mounting pressure.
They did not follow the usual pattern of a suicide car bombing, the sources said, pointing out that they neither rammed the car into a target nor collided intentionally.
The terror module seemed to have improperly assembled the improvised explosive device (IED), which is suspected to have caused the blast in the moving Hyundai i20. The senior security sources revealed that the bomb was premature and not fully developed, thus limiting the impact. Earlier, it was found that the explosion did not create a crater and nor were any shrapnel recovered.
The blast took place when the slow-moving car approached a traffic signal near Gate No. 1 of the Red Fort Metro station on Monday evening.
The investigators suspect that the explosion could be accidental rather than a suicide attack. However, this can be ascertained during the course of a detailed investigation, the sources said. Eight people, including three doctors, have been arrested in the case so far.
In the raids carried out by the Jammu and Kashmir Police and the Intelligence Bureau on November 9 and 10 in Faridabad, Haryana, around 3,000 kg of explosives, detonators, timers and other bomb making material were recovered.
A major attack has been averted, said the sources, who credited it to “pan-India alertness and coordinated crackdown” on suspect modules.
