Twenty-six days before a huge blast ripped through a crowded thoroughfare in Delhi, killing 13 people, a pamphlet with a green letterhead had appeared in Nowgam, a staid neighbourhood of cinder-block homes and rutted streets on the outskirts of Srinagar, Indian-administered Kashmir’s main city.

Drafted in broken Urdu, the letter proclaimed affiliation with Jaish-e-Muhammad, a proscribed armed group based in Pakistan.

The text was loaded with warnings directed at Indian government forces stationed in the region, and at those in the local population seen as having betrayed Kashmir’s separatist movement.

“We warn the local people of strict action who do not adhere to this warning,” the poster read, cautioning shopkeepers on the highway between Srinagar and Jammu, another key city, against sheltering government forces.

Such missives were once common from local and Pakistan-backed armed groups at the height of the region’s movement to break from Indian control in the 1990s and the early 2000s.

But after the Indian government revoked Kashmir’s special status, scrapped its statehood, and split the area into two federally ruled territories in August 2019, such posters have been less common – and armed violence has fallen, too. Armed attacks came down from 597 in 2018 to 145 in 2025, according to the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP), a platform that tracks and analyses attacks in South Asia.

The emergence of the pamphlet set off a three-week manhunt spanning Kashmir and multiple Indian regions. It was this investigation, say officials, that connected the threads between multiple individuals plotting an attack – including a doctor believed to have been driving the car that exploded on a packed street junction in New Delhi on Monday, barely metres (a few feet) from the ramparts of the Red Fort, a famous Mughal-era monument.

The case and its coverage in large parts of the Indian media have also prompted a wave of Islamophobia and anti-Kashmiri sentiment.

The scholar and the doctors

As security officials looked to track the source of the pamphlet in Nowgam, they zeroed in on clips from CCTVs. Based on what they saw, they “picked up a couple of suspects, among whom was a Muslim scholar from the Shopian district of South Kashmir”, a police official based in Kashmir told Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity as he wasn’t authorised to talk to the media.

The 24-year-old scholar, Irfan Ahmad, preached at a local mosque in Srinagar where the posters had appeared.

His interrogation led police to another name: Adeel Rather, a doctor living in Wanpora village, Kulgam, 20km (12 miles) away.

But when police reached Rather’s house, he wasn’t there. They eventually traced and arrested him some 500km (300 miles) away in the dusty town of Saharanpur in the state of Uttar Pradesh, where Rather was working at a private hospital.  The police claim they also found an assault rifle in his locker in Government Medical College Anantnag, in Kashmir, where he worked until October 2024.

When Rather was questioned, he named another associate: Muzammil Shakeel Ganai, yet another Kashmiri doctor working in Al-Falah University in Faridabad, one of the key satellite cities around New Delhi.

Indian police claim that when they raided two homes rented in Ganai’s name in Faridabad, they recovered incendiary chemicals and weaponry weighing 2,900kg (6,400lb).

‘Transactional terror module busted’

These arrests, Indian police in Kashmir claim, have helped them unearth what they describe as a “transnational terror module” linked to Jaish-e-Muhammad and Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind (AGuH), another proscribed fighter outfit linked to al-Qaeda.

AGuH was founded in Kashmir by Zakir Rashid, a local fighter commander who was shot by government forces in May 2019. Although its activities have since quietened, Indian police claim that the group has been revived by new leaders from neighbouring Pakistan.

“In a major counterterrorism success, Jammu and Kashmir police have busted an inter-state and transactional terror module,” police said in a statement.

“During the ongoing investigation, searches were conducted at multiple locations by Jammu and Kashmir police,” the statement read. It also said that seven accused were arrested from different locations, including Ganai and Rather, the doctors; Ahmed, the scholar; and four other people.

Those others include a woman from Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh state.

But officials say their investigations also led them to another Kashmiri doctor, Umar Nabi.

Before they could arrest Nabi, though, the Indian capital was rocked by Monday’s explosion. Driving the white sports car laden with explosives, say investigators, was 29-year-old Nabi.

‘Crackdown across Kashmir’

CCTV recordings from New Delhi released by police show a young man in a black mask driving the Hyundai hatchback passing through a toll booth in Delhi. Another clip reveals the same vehicle moving slowly through the traffic-clogged junction before a yellow flash of light appears on the screen.

Amid a nationwide security alert following the explosion, police have launched a crackdown across parts of Kashmir. On November 12, heavily armoured police and members of the paramilitary roamed the streets in Srinagar, pushing their way into homes for searches.

In the Kulgam district of South Kashmir alone, security forces conducted 400 search operations, rounding up about 500 people for questioning. Similar raids were reported from the districts of  Baramulla, Handwara, Sopore, Kulgam, Pulwama and Awantipora.

In Koil village of south Kashmir’s Pulwama district, the family of Nabi – the alleged driver of the car that exploded – is in shock.

“On Monday evening, police took away my brother-in-law and then my husband,” said Nabi’s sister-in-law, Muzamil Akhtar. “We were taken aback when we saw the media and police here; we did not know anything.”

She said police had also taken away Nabi’s mother for DNA sampling.

“Our whole house was thoroughly searched. I spoke to Umar last week on Friday. He was normal and told me he would be coming home after three days. We were all excited about his visit. We did not expect any of this,” she said.

Relatives described Nabi as an exceptional student in his school and medical college in Srinagar. One relative said the family used to look upon Umar with pride for his achievements.

“He was always carrying a book in his hand. He was always reading and engrossed in books. He was our hope,” the relative said through the blur of tears, requesting anonymity. “He was a calm person.”

Less than a kilometre (half a mile) from Nabi’s home, there is an eerie silence at the home of Ganai, the doctor arrested in Faridabad.

His father, Shakeel Ganai, told Al Jazeera they were informed by the police on Tuesday that their son had been brought to Kashmir from Faridabad for questioning.

“We did not know what was happening; we had no idea about any of this,” Shakeel said.

Ganai studied at a local school in Koil village and later cleared the competitive exam for a degree in medicine from Jammu. He also pursued a master’s course in medicine from Sher-e-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences (SKIMS) in Srinagar and later joined Al-Falah University in Faridabad, where he had been working for two years.

“He visited home in July when I went through a kidney surgery. We would talk to him almost every day,” Shakeel, the father, said, adding that police searched their house and detained his other son as well.

Ganai’s sister, who is also studying medicine and was scheduled to be married in November, said the case should be properly probed.

“My brother worked hard his whole life. He was very ambitious. We cannot believe he is involved in this,” she said.

‘Lists of Kashmiri residents’

But even as investigations continue, Islamophobia and anti-Kashmiri sentiments have swept several urban communities around India.

On November 12, police in the Indian city of Gurgaon called up housing societies to compile a list of the Kashmiri residents living among them, causing a sense of panic.

Social media sites in India have in recent days been inundated with calls for violence against Kashmiris, with some users also pledging to evict Kashmiri tenants living in cities like Delhi and Noida.

Nasir Khuehami, a student activist from Kashmir, said about 150,000 Kashmiri students are studying in different parts of India. “They are currently plagued by the thoughts of safety and security,” Khuehami said.

The explosion and investigations into it have also raised new questions about India’s approach to Kashmir and fighting armed groups, say experts.

Earlier this year, Amit Shah, India’s home minister, had boasted about how there was now “zero recruitment” into the ranks of armed rebels in Indian-administered Kashmir. In a speech in Parliament, he said all fighters killed by government forces in Kashmir in the first half of 2025 were foreigners.

But experts now believe such statements were misleading.

“There will never be an absolute certainty that the recruitment has come to an end,” said Ajai Sahni, executive director of the Institute for Conflict Management in New Delhi. “These doctors were colleagues who appeared to have been bound by common beliefs or by personal friendships. I would not call it recruitment but mobilisation.”