Deserted house in Nuh — Umar’s base for 10 days, where he ‘planned’ Red Fort blast

Barricades have been placed and two policemen deployed at the modest brick and cement house at Hidayat Colony, opposite Mission Hospital. “We have been told not to let any neighbour or outsider enter the house,” one of them said.

“The (neighbours) are scared,” the officer said.

A peek inside the house and one can see a washing machine next to a washroom, and slippers outside it.

“I do not know anything about them or that house. I started living here only recently,” a woman, who resides in an adjoining building, said.

A Delhi Police officer said that Umar contacted one of the two men — a peon-cum-electrician at Al Falah University in Faridabad where Umar was employed as an assistant professor in the general medicine department — looking for a room about 10 days prior to the blast.

“He took Umar to Sahar Hidayat colony in Nuh, where his brother-in-law lives. He asked him to give Umar a room in his house, and his brother-in-law obliged,” an officer said.

The brother-in-law, however, had issues with Umar, as he was very “unhygienic”, the officer added.

“Umar stayed there for about 10 days and then left. It seems that the brother-in-law was unaware about who Umar was… but Umar did stay at his house and plan the blast,” the officer said.

Umar had left the Al Falah campus after another doctor at the university, Muzammil Ganai, was arrested by Jammu & Kashmir Police on October 30. He had travelled to Nuh in the Hyundai i20, which blew up near Red Fort on November 10. Umar had returned to Delhi only on the day of the incident.

The detentions came after Delhi Police Special Cell sleuths camped in the Nuh and Mewat for nearly five days, where they tracked nearly 200 contacts related to Umar and Ganai. “The peon (at Al Falah) is being questioned to see if he was aware of Umar’s plans or has any kind of links with the terror module,” a senior officer said.

Investigators also revealed that staff of a hospital inside the Faiz-e-Illahi mosque in Central Delhi, where Umar spent 15 minutes before he parked his car at the Red Fort parking lot before the blast, have been questioned, but no links have emerged so far.

“The staffer, along with a man who was seen on CCTV footage following Umar to the mosque… both have been questioned, but no links with the accused have been established,” a senior police officer said.