Jan 21 Narwal blasts: Govt employee from Reasi arrested, drone-dropped Perfume IED recovered, says DGP Dilbagh Singh

Srinagar : Jammu and Kashmir police Thursday claimed to have achieved a major breakthrough in January 21 Narwal, Jammu blast by arrested a Lashkar-e-Toiba militant, who is also a government employee, from whose possession a “perfume IED”, first of its kind, was recovered.

Addressing a press conference in Jammu, Director General of Police (DGP) Dilbagh Singh, as per news agency, said that after 11 days of hardwork of the Jammu police, a major success was achieved in the form of arrest of one Arif Ahmed, a resident of Reasi district of Jammu.

“Arif is a government employee and is an active militant of Lashkar-e-Toiba outfit. He was working at the behest of Qasim, a Reasi resident and his uncle Qamardin, also a Reasi resident, presently in Pakistan, who are part of LeT,” the DGP said. He said Arif was involved in three IED blast incidents—Shahstri Nagar, Katra and January 21 incident of Narwal, Jammu.

“So far we had seen IED with explosive materials, sticky bombs and timer fitted IEDs but a new type of IED was recovered from Arif which is Perfume IED. This IED is in a bottle form and seems like a perfume bottle but contains explosive material,” the DGP said, adding that “since the IED is new to us, experts will see how harmful and how powerful it can be. We have not touched it so far.”

He said that the main aim of these IEDs is to target innocent people and to trigger communal hatred in the Jammu region. “Arif will not only lose his job but a strong dossier will be prepared against him. He was a very clever operative. He had burnt all the evidence be that his clothes, shoes and that he even set ablaze his mobile phone as well. But police worked hard on even small inputs and leads that led to the arrest of Arif,” he said, as per KNO.

The DGP said that IED’s received by Arif were air-dropped through drones. “He has confessed to the crime,” he said. To a query about Danghri, Rajouri incident and the fate of probe, the DGP said that the investigations are in the advance stage and the output will be shared with the media men shortly.

Asked about further links of Arif and possible Kashmir connection, the DGP said that so far it has not been seen that Kashmiri youth are coming to Jammu for militancy or for that matter Jammu youth going to Kashmir. “Further investigations are on,” he said—(KNO)