Red Fort Blast: Inside the Jaish-Linked Lucknow house where police found phones and weapons

Investigators looking into the recent blast outside the Red Fort in Delhi have said they recovered six mobile phones, three knives, an international calling‐card and several digital devices in a raid at the residence of Parvez Ansari, the brother of the arrested doctor Shaheen Shahid, in Lucknow.

The Uttar Pradesh Police and the state Anti‐Terrorism Squad (ATS) carried out the raid as part of their wider investigation into the explosion and its links to a so-called “white-collar” terror module with possible connections to Jaish‑e‑Mohammad (JeM).

The six phones reportedly recovered from Ansari’s residence had been used to contact numbers in Jammu, while the international calling card was for making calls to the module’s handlers overseas, officials said.

Moreover, the ATS claims Ansari had devised a “special system” for preventing tracing of the signals from the phones to make it more difficult to intercept and track the communications.

In addition, the seized computer found in his house had a hidden disk on which data is being analysed by forensic experts for leads into the module’s activities.

The knives found in the raids were also being investigated to determine whether they were used in illegal activities or intended for future terror operations.

Ansari is an academic at the Integral University in Lucknow and was reportedly on the run after his sister was arrested. The Lucknow police apprehended him and he is now under questioning.

His car, which was registered in Saharanpur and used by another accused in the module – Adil Ahmad of Anantnag, was also seized.

Raid being conducted as part of wider dragnet in Uttar Pradesh, with teams fanning out to Noida, Ghaziabad, Meerut, Varanasi, Ayodhya, Mathura-Vrindavan, Gorakhpur, Kanpur, Saharanpur and Aligarh.

The Red Fort blast took place hours after authorities had said they had arrested suspects and recovered material from an apartment in Faridabad as part of their probe into the module. The Faridabad action had resulted in a state of alert in the security establishment and the subsequent search in Lucknow.

Investigators have said that the case is still under preliminary stages of investigation and the forensic analysis of data on the computers and devices used by the suspects could help determine the network’s broader reach, the financial and external support, communication log and future plans. The phones and the international calling card point to a more elaborate system of communication than first assumed. Security experts have said the system to avoid tracing of signals points to how terror modules are becoming more tech savvy and evading surveillance.

Authorities have asked people and local institutions in the areas covered in the raids to maintain a heightened sense of vigilance. The scope of the searches in several cities across the state point to the scale of the investigation and the seriousness with which the case is being pursued.

The arrests and the seizure of physical and digital evidence would likely take the case to the next levels of investigation, tracking down handlers, decrypting communication logs and attempting to map out the funding sources. The coming days are critical to seeing if this case would yield further arrests or disruptions of an organised network.