Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India vowed that nobody responsible for a blast that killed eight people in New Delhi would be “spared” as the police appeared to be narrowing the focus of their investigation to a possible terrorist attack.
If proved to be deliberate, the blast, which took place near a subway station during evening rush hour in the old city, would be the deadliest in India’s capital in over a decade, shattering the relative safety of Indian cities, barring those in the restive Kashmir region.
Mr. Modi, who arrived in Bhutan for an official visit on Tuesday, said that he had followed the case with investigating agencies overnight.
“The conspirators behind this will not be spared,” Mr. Modi said. “All those responsible will be brought to justice.”
Any finding of terrorism could also escalate regional tensions.
India frequently accuses Pakistan of being behind attacks on its soil, saying that they are orchestrated by groups operating from sanctuaries across the border. A deadly terrorist attack this spring that killed 26 people in the Indian-administered region of Kashmir led to days of military conflict between the nuclear-armed neighbors.
At the time, Mr. Modi’s government issued a warning that it would treat any future terrorist attack on its soil as an “act of war.”
Officials have said that investigators looking into Monday’s blast are keeping all angles open, although the police indicated on Tuesday that they were examining whether it was a terrorist attack. As well as the eight killed, a dozen others were wounded in the explosion.
Raja Banthia, a senior police official in New Delhi, told reporters at the blast site early on Tuesday that the police had filed a case that included sections of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, a law usually used for investigating terrorism cases. The National Investigation Agency, the country’s lead agency for investigating terrorist attacks, has taken the lead in the probe.
Amit Shah, Mr. Modi’s powerful home minister, visited the site of the blast on Monday night and chaired a meeting of top security officials on Tuesday morning. Mr. Shah’s office has not released any details of the investigation so far, including of the progress of lab tests on evidence found at the scene.
The blast on Monday came at the end of a day when the Indian police said that they had disbanded an “interstate and transnational terror module.” They said they had confiscated several weapons and a large amount of bomb-making material that the police said was linked to Jaish-e-Mohammed, a Pakistan-based group long accused of attacks in India. After the attack in Kashmir this spring, which hit a tourist picnic spot, India carried out airstrikes in Pakistan targeting facilities of the group.
The police in Jammu and Kashmir, part of a region that is disputed by India and Pakistan, said that they had followed leads to towns outside New Delhi, where they arrested half a dozen suspects, including medical doctors, and confiscated over 6,000 pounds of material that could be used to make bombs, including chemicals, electronic circuits and remote controls.
Much of the investigation into the explosion on Monday has focused on the movement of the vehicle and its driver, officials said. The police in Kashmir said that the driver was probably connected to the same group that had been disbanded, with many of them working at the same medical institution on the outskirts of the capital. But officials in New Delhi have not commented on any links.
The blast in New Delhi occurred in the Red Fort area, a crowded part of the capital that leads to the bazaars and other historic sites of the old city.
Leeladhar Vishvkarma, 34, a cook from the central state of Madhya Pradesh who had traveled to Delhi in search of work, described the immediate explosion as “earthshaking.”
“After the main blast, some smaller blasts took place in other vehicles,” he said. “People died inside and outside the vehicles.”
Hari Kumar contributed reporting from New Delhi and Showkat Nanda from Srinagar, Kashmir.
Mujib Mashal is the South Asia bureau chief for The Times, helping to lead coverage of India and the diverse region around it, including Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bhutan.
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