Delhi Terror Attack Heightens India-Pakistan Tension

A powerful car bombing near Delhi’s Red Fort Metro Station has ratcheted up existing tensions between Delhi and Islamabad. While a motive for the 10 November attack is yet to be specified, the perpetrator and a co-conspirator were from Kashmir, which is the subject of ongoing territorial disputes between India and Pakistan. The Indian government has been reluctant to explicitly link the attacks to Pakistan or Pakistan-based terrorist groups, such as Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), but some commentators have nonetheless drawn such connections.

The terror attack killed at least 13 people and injured around 20. While it remains to be seen how the government will respond to this attack, in May Prime Minister Narendra Modi said ‘any future act of terror will be treated as an act of war’. In that same month, India and Pakistan went through a short, intense aerial conflict following an April terrorist attack in Pahalgam, Kashmir, which killed 25 tourists and was linked to the Resistance Front, a Pakistan-based group.

In a major intelligence victory just hours prior to the blast, the Jammu and Kashmir police recovered about 3,000 kg of explosives from two rented apartments in Faridabad, linked to a medical professional working in a local hospital in the city. The confiscated materials included 350 kg of ammonium nitrate, commonly used in explosives for terror attacks. India’s national Forensic Science Laboratory has collected more than 40 samples from the blast sites. An official from the organisation said that one of the materials used in the blast was ammonium nitrate, but a second sample pointed to something more powerful.

Several reports have outlined the sequence of events that evening. However, some confusion persists, including about whether the explosion was accidental or intentional. Based on a number of arrests made since the blast, Indian intelligence sources believe that a ‘Pakistan-backed Jaish-e-Mohammed “white-collar” terror network of medics’ were planning six bombings across six cities on 6 December, the anniversary of the demolition of the Babri Masjid, a disputed site claimed by both Hindus and Muslims that was destroyed by a Hindu nationalist mob in 1992. This led to riots and killings, heightening existing religious tensions.