Delhi Car Blast: What We Know and What We Do Not

New Delhi: As more and more unverified information has been aired or circulated by various media agencies in a rush to be ahead, the mystery surrounding the car blast in front of the Red Fort in Delhi on Monday evening – in which at least 13 people were killed and several others were hurt – has only deepened over the past 24 hours.

The Wire takes stock of what we credibly know about what happened, and what we still do not.

For starters, the Delhi police has not confirmed that the blast was the result of a suicide or ‘fidayeen’ attack, even as a number of news houses have cited unnamed Delhi police officials as saying that preliminary investigations suggest that it could have been a fidayeen attack or that the Pakistan-based terror outfit Jaish-e-Mohammed was involved. Unnamed sources have also been quoted as giving varying accounts to the press.

We do know that no traces of RDX – an explosive that is associated with conventional bomb blasts – were found on the scene, and pending further information we are currently in the dark about the exact nature of the kind of explosives involved in Monday's incident.

Some reportage aired the purported name of the car's previous owner – at a time when the authorities were tight-lipped about even preliminary details of the incident – thereby projecting the blast along communal lines.

There is also the question of a connection – if any – between the blast and the arrests by the Jammu and Kashmir police of doctors who it alleges are part of a ‘terror module’ in Haryana's Faridabad.

Although unnamed Delhi police officials speaking to the press have sought to link the blast with the arrests made by the Jammu and Kashmir police, there has been no official announcement linking the two developments.

However, Delhi police officials have said that they are probing the role of one Dr Umar Nabi, alleged to have been associated with a private medical college in Faridabad, in the blast. He has also been reported as the main suspect. Police took his father and his mother for questioning and a possible DNA test. However, no arrests have been made so far in the Delhi blasts case.

Watch the video below to sift the known from the unverified and the unknown.

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