SRINAGAR: Jammu and Kashmir Police Chief, Dilbagh Singh has stated that the police have recovered a perfume bomb. It is for the first time that such an explosive is said to have been seized during more than 30 years of counter-insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir.

Director General of Jammu and Kashmir police Dilbagh Singh addressing a press conference in Srinagar on Monday January 20,2020.KL Image by Bilal Bahadur

The bomb is said to have been recovered from a government school teacher, Arif, who is a resident of the Reasi district. The recovery occurred during the ongoing investigations into the twin blasts in Jammu’s Narwal locality on January 21. Nine civilians were injured in the explosion that took place amidst high alert owing to Bharat Jodo yatra’s entry into Jammu.

“This is the first time we have recovered a perfume IED,” DGP Singh told a press conference in Jammu. “We have not recovered any perfume IED before. The IED will blast if anyone tries to press or open it. Our special team will handle that IED.”

It is basically a bottle of perfume that has been converted into a bomb. It explodes when one attempts opening it.

“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.”

Singh said the arrest and recovery was part of the 11-days investigations in the Narwal case. “Arif 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,” Singh said, asserting a strong dossier is in making about his activities.

Police also claimed that Arif, during interrogation has admitted to his role in the attack on a bus carrying Vaishno Devi pilgrims in which four people were killed in May 2022. As many as 24 passengers were injured in that blast.

(Photograph used in this report is merely representational)

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