Shock as Delhi blast linked to multiple doctors in ‘white-collar’ terror cell

Attack has triggered concerns over the radicalisation of professionals

- Nirmala Ganapathy India Bureau Chief

Al Falah University in the village of Dhauj in the northern Indian state of Haryana. The case has sparked much debate in India over how so many doctors, described by their respective families as hard-working and studious, became involved in a terror network. ST PHOTO: NIRMALA GANAPATHY

(ST PHOTO: NIRMALA GANAPATHY)

The Al Falah University sits amid farmland in the village of Dhauj, south of New Delhi.

Spread across 29ha, the normally peaceful rural seat of learning has been swept up in a widening terror investigation that is focusing on doctors who taught at the university.

One doctor from the Al Falah School of Medical Sciences and Research Centre, a medical college, is now the prime suspect in the Nov 10 car bombing in Delhi that killed 13 people and wounded more than 20 others.

Two other doctors are suspected of being in the same “white-collar” terror cell with links to militant groups in Kashmir, a disputed area between India and Pakistan. The cell’s exact links to Pakistan, if any, are unclear.

Over half a dozen people, including the doctors, have been detained or arrested so far.

The blast shattered a years-long peace in the capital, which has not encountered a major terror-linked bombing since 2011.

But the Nov 10 attack, and a blast a day later in Pakistan, has heightened fears of a larger regional conflagration. Tensions remain high between India and Pakistan after a four-day conflict in May triggered by a terror attack in Kashmir that killed 26 people.

The car blast, which occurred in a busy street near the metro station in front of the Mughal-era Red Fort, was officially declared a terror attack after a Cabinet Committee on Security meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Nov 12.