NEW DELHI: A bomber who was part of the March 25 attack on a gurdwara in Kabul was not ‘Abu Khalid al-Hindi’ from Kerala but an Afghan national, Afghanistan authorities have informed the NIA and India’s intelligence agencies.
Authorities carried out a DNA test on the bomber, suspected to be 21-year-old Muhammad Muhsin alias Abu Khalid al-Hindi and the result revealed otherwise. The Kabul attack case, in which an Indian was killed on a foreign land and one of the bombers was suspected to be an Indian, became the first international case to be investigated by NIA. But now that the suspect has been found to be an Afghan national, it may affect the investigation.
On March 25, three gunmen stormed the gurdwara where hundreds had gathered for prayers, killing 25 people, including an Indian national. The Islamic State-Khorasan Province (ISKP), the Afghanistan arm of the terror group Islamic State, claimed responsibility for it.
A photo released by the terror group of one of the gunmen made the investigating agencies suspect that the photo was of Muhsin, who reportedly joined ISIS in 2016. The development also raises questions about the speculation that one of the bombers involved in the August 3 Jalalabad jail attack, which left 29 dead, was also from Kerala. Investigation agencies suspect that the bomber is Kalukettiya Purayil Ijas, who had left for Khorasan province in Afghanistan from Hyderabad in the same ‘batch’ of recruits as Muhsin.