While dissecting and understanding the violence in the Nuh district in 2023, I had written that it should not be seen as a law-and-order incident but as a man-made disaster born out of radicalisation and immigration.

It was a structural failure – born out of administrative neglect – and that the state needed a long-horizon, multi-pillar “rule of four" approach rather than event management.

I had warned that the Mewat area was about to explode, and it did in the Red Fort on November 10. Another article explained the hollowness of the district administration itself: how Nuh had been left to run on autopilot, staffed by officials who treated it as a punishment posting, and how the most fragile district in Haryana was being governed through absenteeism.

At that time, these arguments were warnings.

The Red Fort car bombing, the discovery of vast explosive stockpiles across NCR, and the uncovering of a Faridabad-centred terror module have now turned those warnings into an uncomfortable confirmation. The geography of the terror network discovered after the blast runs through exactly the Mewat belt earlier identified as high-risk: Faridabad, Palwal, and Nuh.

The white Hyundai i20 that exploded near the Red Fort on November 10, carrying an estimated 30 kg to 40 kg of ammonium nitrate and other explosives, killing 13 people and injuring many more, has since been linked to a sophisticated module aligned with Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM). Several of its operatives were doctors associated with Al-Falah University in Faridabad.

The movement of both men and material travelled through Ferozepur Jhirka and parts of Nuh before entering Delhi. What was once described metaphorically as “waiting to explode" has now done so in the most literal sense.

For years, the Mewat region’s fundamental vulnerability has been shaped by a basic arithmetic of administration. Haryana operates with approximately 117 IAS officers, 118 IPS officers, and 247 HCS officers.

This produces a ratio of roughly one senior officer for every 2.17 lakh citizens. Contrast this with Himachal Pradesh, which operates with a ratio closer to 1:64,000.

The disparity becomes more damaging in districts like Nuh, where officers are posted briefly, depart quickly, and seldom invest in building either administrative capacity or community trust. During the 2023 violence, both the deputy commissioner and the superintendent of police were physically absent from Nuh at the time of the outbreak.

The symbolism was impossible to........

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