NEW DELHI: The Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has officially handed over the investigation into the Monday Delhi car blast to the National Investigation Agency (NIA), which said the agency was “associated with the local police since yesterday” and has “now begun the process of formally taking over the case”.
Meanwhile, according to the preliminary investigation into the case, the probe teams suspect involvement of Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) terror module behind the attack, as they have found “some internal communications of the outfit hinting at ‘revenge’ and ‘betrayal’ by its own cadre and asking loyal ones to do something.
The move to hand over the probe to the NIA came after two back-to-back high-level security review meetings chaired by the Union Home Minister Amit Shah today. The agencies have been actively conducting search operations in Jammu and Kashmir, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, have successfully traced multiple leads of the terror outfit and search operations are going on in coordination with respective state police forces.
A source in the MHA said, “The Union Home Minister decided to hand over the investigation of the incident to the NIA. He also instructed the Forensic Science Laboratory to match and investigate the sample specimens collected from the blast spot and come up with the details of the blast at the earliest. It was also instructed to match the samples collected from the bodies in the car that exploded. The NIA was instructed to investigate and submit a report at the earliest.”
Earlier in the day the Delhi Police registered an FIR under head “a bomb blast” and invoked sections pertaining to conspiracy and punishment for a terror attack under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act – UAPA. Also, charges under the Explosive Substances Act, specifically Section 3 for causing an explosion likely to endanger life and Section 4 for the attempt to cause an explosion, have been added.
According to intelligence sources, the first lead about the Faridabad module, which has a direct link with the blast, was first discovered by the Jammu & Kashmir Police, which recovered an internal letter of the outfit during a counter-terror operation in Nowgam.
The sources said, the October 17, 2025 letter appeared to have been issued in the name of a banned Pakistan-based terror outfit and is addressed to an unnamed recipient believed to be in Pakistan or Jammu and Kashmir. But the language in which the directives were issued appeared consistent with previous JeM communications circulated between 2016 and 2021, they said.
A source said, “The letter contained jihadist slogans, threats and threat of action and punishment against individuals accused of betraying the organisation or cooperating with security forces.” Invoking the name of a commander identified only as “Ameera-Commander”, it concluded with aggressive religious sign-offs typical of JeM’s internal propaganda style, he added.
According to intelligence sources, possibly an internal fissure within the JeM network could have led to the Monday Delhi blast. “The tone and timing of this communication point to growing pressure within the organisation following intensified counter-insurgency action in Jammu and Kashmir,” a senior intelligence official said.
In the last 14-15 hours since the blast, the probe team started believing that the Nogaon letter might be a critical piece of evidence establishing the motivation and internal turmoil in the JeM, the sources said.
