He’s a Class 9 student, say police
The suspected attacker behind the Jammu grenade blast is “a minor with no police records”, according to the police’s special counter-insurgency cell in Kashmir Valley. Meanwhile, the death toll in the blast rose to two on Friday when one of the injured died in a Jammu hospital.
A top police official told media Yasir Javed Bhat alias Arhan, who was arrested on the basis of video footage collected at the site of the blast in the main inter-State bus stand in Jammu and oral testimony, “is a Class 9 student and is just 15 years old.”
“There are no police records against Bhat. However, his native place Khanpora-Dassein village in Kulgam is home to two top Hizbul Mujahideen commanders Feroz Bhat, the possible handler, and Umar Ahmad. We are investigating his links with the group,” said the official.
The security agencies in Jammu had prior intelligence inputs about a possible militant attack in the city on Thursday. On Wednesday, a security alert “warned of an attack in Jammu and even cited the possible targets.”
The first leads in the blast case suggest Bhat came in a private car from the Valley on Wednesday evening and took the Srinagar-Jammu highway, with just one-way traffic from Jammu to Srinagar allowed due to landslides. “The family contends it’s his first visit to Jammu,” said the official.
The police suspect that the student, arrested just 20 km away the explosion site near Nagrota after he was spotted running at the Jammu bus stand, was “self-trained to carry out grenade attacks through videos on the social media.”
“We are investigating who ferried him to Jammu,” said the police. Bhat told the interrogators that “he concealed the grenade in a lunch box and used dry rice to hide it.”
Meanwhile, the police on Friday evening reported that the funeral of Muhammad Riyaz from Anantnag’s Mattan, who was the second “civilian” to die in the blast, witnessed gunshots fired by unknown gunmen at the Akurah graveyard. “The matter is under investigation. ,” said the police.
Riyaz was a small-time trader and had arrived in Jammu from New Delhi on Wednesday evening, according to the family.
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