At least 27 persons were injured in an explosion at the Nowgam police station in Jammu and Kashmir on Friday night, PTI reported.

The blast was accidental and took place while handling the explosive material seized in the recent raids on terror modules allegedly connected to the Delhi blast, unidentified police officers told the news agency.

Those injured included 24 police personnel and three civilians. They were taken to hospitals in Srinagar, PTI reported. Nowgam is located on the outskirts of Srinagar.

The exact casualties from the blast were not immediately clear, but several persons were feared dead. The Jammu and Kashmir Police has not officially commented on the matter. NDTV reported that nine persons died in the explosion.

A joint team of Jammu and Kashmir Police and Forensic Science Laboratory was surveying the material, including ammonium nitrate, confiscated during the raids in Faridabad, Haryana, The Hindu reported.

The police station and several vehicles caught fire because of the blast, The Indian Express reported.

Delhi blast and police raids

On Monday evening, a car exploded near the Red Fort metro station in Delhi, leaving 13 persons dead. While no details have been officially provided yet about what caused the blast, the police have filed a case under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act and the Explosives Act.

Reports have alleged that Umar Nabi, a resident of Jammu and Kashmir’s Pulwama district, was in the car that exploded. Reports have also claimed that Nabi was a key figure in a terror network spanning Kashmir, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh.

Hours before the blast, the police said that it had cracked an “inter-state and transnational terror module” in Faridabad and Uttar Pradesh’s Saharanpur. Two doctors from Kashmir – Adeel Ahmad Rather and Muzamil Shakeel – are among those arrested in the alleged case.

The police said at the time that it had recovered 2,900 kg of improvised explosive device-making material in raids in several states.

Shakeel, a doctor, taught at Al-Falah University at Dhauj in the Faridabad district. Two more persons from the university – Umar Mohammed and Shaheen Shahid – have been taken into custody in the case.

On Wednesday, the Union government described the blast as a “terrorist incident, perpetrated by anti-national forces”.

In the backdrop of the blast and the terror module case, the Jammu and Kashmir Police on Wednesday conducted raids at more than 300 locations in the Kashmir valley allegedly linked to persons affiliated with the banned Jamaat-e-Islami.

The raids were conducted in the districts of Kulgam, Pulwama, Shopian, Baramulla and Ganderbal.

More than 200 locations in Kulgam were raided, and over 400 cordon-and-search operations were carried out in the district in the past week.

The police also interrogated about 500 persons allegedly affiliated with banned organisations. Several of those interrogated have been shifted to District Jail Mattan in Anantnag under preventive detention laws.

The police also claimed to have recovered incriminating material, including documents and digital devices, during the raids.

The actions came after intelligence that elements linked to the Jamaat-e-Islami, banned under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, were trying to revive the organisation under different names, the police said.

The authorities in Jammu and Kashmir have not officially linked the terror module and blast cases with the ongoing raids.

Also read: How a Kashmir probe into Jaish posters nearly unmasked Delhi blast plot

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