Red Fort blast | Accused visited Lucknow in August, planned terror attacks on key city landmarks: NIA

They said that two of the key accused had travelled from Faridabad to Lucknow between August 25 and 30, 2025 as part of a 'calculated reconnaissance trip'.

The investigation conducted by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) into the Red Fort car blast case revealed a conspiracy by the accused to carry out a series of terror attacks in Lucknow.

The targets included legislative assembly and other prominent locations with high footfalls, PTI reported on Monday, quoting official sources.

They said that two of the key accused -- Dr Muzammil Shakeel and Dr Shaheen Saeed -- had travelled from Haryana's Faridabad to Lucknow between August 25 and 30, 2025 as part of a "calculated reconnaissance trip" for this terror conspiracy.

The NIA, through a detailed investigation including deposition of multiple eye witness accounts and technical analysis, following the financial trail established the entire sequence of events that transpired during this visit to Lucknow.

Muzammil managed hostile reconnaissance of multiple targets which were symbols of the Uttar Pradesh government. He surveyed the general area of Vidhan Sabha, Bapu Bhawan (civil secretariat) and areas with large amount of footfalls including Imambara, Lal Bagh and Aminabad, the sources said.

"They were contemplating a plan to explode a car laden with explosives near these building complexes," a source said stating that the accused individuals found these areas as suitable targets for their mission.

The NIA-led investigation also found that accused Muzammil used his phone to search chemical shops in Uttar Pradesh's capital city stocking the two precursor chemicals required to manufacture Triacetone Triperoxide (TATP), the highly unstable peroxide explosive known internationally as the 'Mother of Satan', which was also used in the Red Fort car blast in Delhi on November 10 last year.

PTI further reported that a list was recovered by the NIA during the course of the investigation in which Shaheen, on Muzammil's instructions, copied the names of these relevant shops in her own handwriting.

The duo stayed at the residence of one of the relatives of Shaheen at Lucknow. Shaheen's ancestral house, where her father lives separately, is located at Khandari Bazar, Lal Bagh, the sources informed.

Muzammil then asked a "witness", who hails from Lucknow and was familiar with the city, to physically enquire at these shops about availability of the chemicals in large quantities, the sources said.

This witness was roped in by Muzammil as he was a local and could make enquiries without raising suspicion, unlike Muzammil who could be immediately identified as an outsider, they said.

According to the sources, the accused individuals also looked out for a place at a remote location of the city where they could carry out their explosive-making operations in a clandestine manner, in the same way as they were operating in the rented house in Faridabad's Khori Jamalpur.

These findings are part of a voluminous 7,500-page chargesheet filed by the NIA on May 14 in connection with the high-intensity vehicle-borne IED blast that rocked the national capital on November 10 last year.

The investigation establishes that the Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind (AGuH) interim terror module -- linked to Al-Qaida in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) -- aimed to set up a covert base in Lucknow, with the objective of launching a series of blasts using the same explosive making technique that they used for carrying out the blast at Red Fort, the sources said.

However, their plans were thwarted after busting of the module -- also known as "doctor" or "white-collar" module due to involvement of medical professionals.

A wider "jihadi conspiracy" was later exposed through a detailed scientific and forensic investigation as the accused, some of whom were radicalised medical professionals, were found to be inspired by AQIS/AGuH ideology to carry out the deadly attack, according to the NIA chargesheet.

Earlier, the NIA revealed that that a chargesheeted accused, with links found to an offshoot of global terrorist outfit Al-Qaida, allegedly misused an artificial intelligence (AI) platform for "terror engineering", agencies reported quoting sources.

(with PTI inputs)