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New Delhi, Nov 17 (IANS) In an interview to NDTV, Italian investigative journalist Francesca Marino warned that the November 10 suicide attack on Delhi’s Red Fort was not an isolated incident but part of a larger resurgence of Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM). He stressed that the group is rebuilding and adopting new strategies to maintain its relevance.
Marino was speaking to NDTV after the launch of her book “From Pulwama to Payback – The Inside Story”, where she revealed that the attack that killed 13 people and injured more than 20 was carried out using triacetone triperoxide or TATP, popularly known as the “Mother of Satan”.
He said the same high explosive compound had been used in previous European attacks and it fits into JeM’s long-term theory of revenge and expansion.
In an exclusive conversation with NDTV, he shared that according to the intelligence he had seen, the plan would have originally been hatched to coincide with December 6, the anniversary of the Babri Masjid demolition, and would have targeted a Hindu religious site.
Marino said Jaish exists only to target India, warning that the group keeps carrying out attacks to maintain relevance and funding.
He said intelligence indicated the organization was aggressively rebuilding, including developing a female suicide bomber wing allegedly linked to relatives of terrorist group leader Masood Azhar.
His book revisits the series of events that followed the 2019 Pulwama attack and India’s Balakot attack, and Marino says those events helped shape Jaish’s trajectory.
While the Red Fort attack underlined Jaish’s regained confidence, Marino traced its origins to the events that followed the Pulwama attack in 2019 and the subsequent Indian Air Force strike on Balakot.
His book revisits the controversy with new details, including his own eyewitness-based reporting from the time.
Islamabad attempted to discredit the report with a coordinated disinformation campaign.
He told NDTV that his trusted source had revealed seeing 35 bodies being taken away on the night of the Balakot attack.
Phones were confiscated, and within hours, the Pakistan Army began clearing the debris and shifting the injured to an army facility.
Over the next few days, the area was sealed off, he said, meanwhile, Pakistan continued to publicly insist that India had “only hit trees”.
According to the journalist, Balakot caused damage to the terrorist group’s camps and infrastructure, but its operational core has since recovered and is seeking revenge.
Based on eyewitness reporting from Balakot, Marino described heavy security measures, alleged evidence removal, and a coordinated Pakistani information campaign that sought to deny or minimize the impact of the attack, a pattern he saw as evidence of Islamabad’s ambiguity over terrorist activity.
He also expressed concern over growing radicalization within Pakistan’s security establishment, citing Army Chief General Asim Munir as an example of courageous leadership which, in his view, helps sustain terrorist networks such as Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).
He told NDTV that his book aims to dispel disinformation for both security analysts and general readers and explain how groups like JeM operate, how they have been enabled, and how the Pulwama, Balakot and Delhi attacks fit into the broader pattern of terrorist tactics against India.
Publication details and the full interview appear on NDTV’s site, where Marino expands on the intelligence sources and operational assessments that underpin his warnings about Jaish-e-Mohammed’s new threat to India’s security.
–IANS
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