Delhi car blast: Terror module wanted to target global coffee chain outlets

The group of doctors arrested in connection with the November 10 Red Fort car-borne suicide attack that killed over a dozen people, were allegedly conspiring to bomb the outlets of a global coffee chain, whose founder is a Jew, a source in the government told The Hindu.

The group of doctors arrested in connection with the November 10, 2025 Red Fort car-borne suicide attack that killed over a dozen people were allegedly conspiring to bomb the outlets of a global coffee chain, whose founder is a Jew, a source in the government told The Hindu. The “white collar terror module” had been active for the past four years, the source said.

The three accused doctors, Muzamil Ahmad Ganaie and Adeel Ahmed Rather from Jammu and Kashmir, and Shaheen Saeed from Uttar Pradesh, have told investigators that there was a difference of opinion with Umar-Un-Nabi, the car-borne attacker who was killed in the terror attack, regarding the choice of targets. By attacking the coffee chain outlets in Delhi and other major Indian cities, the accused wanted to send a message against Israel’s military action in Gaza. Some members of the group wanted to restrict the terror plot to targeting security forces in Jammu and Kashmir, the source said.

The group wanted to revive the Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind (AguH), the Indian offshoot of the global terror outfit al-Qaeda, a senior government official said. The AGuH was founded by Zakir Musa, who was killed in an encounter with the security forces in 2019 in south Kashmir’s Tral. The accused doctors wanted to resurrect the AGuH and “establish Islamic law in the country” after the terror group’s last known commander, Muzamil Ahmad Tantray, was also killed in an encounter in 2021.

The Red Fort car explosion was preceded by a 20-day-long probe by the Jammu and Kashmir Police to find a “terror module” linked to two terror outfits — the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) and the AguH — after a JeM pamphlet surfaced in Srinagar on October 19, 2025. The poster, which asked local people not to cooperate with the police, and refuse them entry in their shops, led the J&K Police to a cleric in Shopian, and the unravelling of the alleged terror plot and discovery of 2,900 kg of explosive substances and sophisticated weapons during raids in Faridabad on November 9, 2025 and November 10, 2025. The JeM is a banned Pakistan-based terror organisation.

“The accused watched online videos and intended to create bombs from scratch. That is why thousands of kilos of urea bags were recovered from them. They had experimented a lot by mixing various chemicals, ensuring that the bombs are prepared from locally available materials, thereby not raising any red flags,” the source said.

Nabi likely hurriedly assembled around 40 kg explosives in the car which exploded near the Red Fort on November 10, 2025, the second official added. The action was likely hastened after other members of his group were arrested.