There is no doubt about what Wasim Ahmed Malik was doing when five kg of plastic explosives packed in a briefcase went off outside the Delhi High Court on September 7; closed circuit cameras recorded him at a cash machine in Jammu, 583 km away, where computers logged him checking his balance. Though he was nowhere near the site of the blast, which killed 15 persons, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) believes Malik to be at the center of a complex plot, which linked Islamist radicals at a medical college in Bangladesh, teenagers in the mountain town of Kishtwar and jihadis from the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Muhammad.
Investigators believe that they have assembled a picture of the man they call "Dr. Jihad" from interviews with his friends at the Jalalabad Ragib-Rabeya Medical College in Sylhet, Bangladesh.
Key among them was Ashraful Haq, a Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates-educated student Islamist, who was an ideological mentor for young people from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Haq is linked to Islami Chhatra Shibir, a Jamaat-e-Islami-linked student group.
According to NIA sources, Malik idolized Afzal Guru, a doctor sentenced to death for his role in the December, 2001 attack on Indian Parliament. "He told other students that he planned to dedicate his life to jihad after graduating in 2014," an NIA source said. NIA investigators found no reason, though, to believe anyone at the medical college had a role in Malik's alleged operation.
Malik's family had sent him to Bangladesh to avoid just the kind of influences that swirled around the hostels at the medical college.
In 2005, when he was only 15, he was detained for several days by the police in connection with the arrest of Salim Wani, an alleged Jaish-e-Muhammad operative accused of harboring a Pakistani terrorist arrested in Jammu. Malik was not charged. A friend of his father told The Hindu, "The family was very worried about Wasim, so (they) packed him off to what they thought was a safe distance from Jammu and Kashmir as soon as possible."
The NIA claims that Malik came to his idea of carrying out a major terrorist act in India as a result of the conversations at Sylhet. In September, he flew home and held the meetings where the bombings were finally planned. Malik is said to have met his brother and an old school friend to persuade them to target the court in Delhi to protest Afzal Guru's conviction.
Last year, Malik's younger brother, Junaid Akram Malik, ran away from home to join a local Hizb-ul-Mujahideen cell. The NIA alleges that both men became disillusioned with the organisation's local leader, Jehangir Saroori -- an experienced operative who had survived two decades of the insurgency by avoiding killings.
Witnesses say that after passionate pleas from Malik, the men made contact with a jihadi who was willing to take aggressive action -- Ghulam Sarwar, a Pakistani Lashkar-e-Taiba agent who lived undercover in Rajouri district, using illegally acquired documents to run a truck and taxi business.
NIA investigators admit that only the interrogation of the fugitives will reveal who supplied the explosive, who conducted reconnaissance, or who planted the device. Evidence exists to show where the suitcase, which contained the improvised explosive device, was bought -- but not who purchased it.
Malik's family contends their son is being framed by two teenaged witnesses desperate to secure a deal with prosecutors. In the weeks to come, the rival claims will be tested -- a test that will rely, in no small part, on the NIA's ability to find the three fugitive terrorists linked to Malik.