Srinagar: Authorities in Kashmir have demolished a residential house owned by the father of the young doctor investigators have described as the “prime suspect” in the Red Fort blast case in Delhi.The demolition took place in south Kashmir’s Pulwama district despite the Supreme Court’s 2024 ruling that razing the homes of suspects or convicts without following due process of law was “totally unconstitutional”.Locals and family sources said that the demolition was carried out in Pulwama’s Koil village using controlled explosives during the intervening night of Thursday and Friday (November 13 and 14).They said that a team of security forces laid a siege of Koil at around 8 PM on Thursday following which residents of dozens of houses in Muslimpora locality were asked to vacate their premises.According to reports, three controlled explosions were carried out in the double-storied house of Dr Umar Nabi who is believed to have driven the car that exploded around a metro station near Red Fort in the national capital on November 10.A view of a demolished house belonging to the family of Dr. Umar in Koil Pulwama, Kashmir. Photo: Umar FarooqNo official has confirmed that Nabi was driving the Hyundai car involved in the blast, even though some reports have quoted officials saying that the DNA samples lifted from the ill-fated car’s mangled remains have matched with the young doctor’s mother.“We were not served any notice,” sources in Nabi’s family said when asked whether the officials had followed the due process of law before demolishing their house. “Security forces asked us to empty the house within minutes on Thursday evening and we had no choice but to leave,” they added.The family sources said that the house was registered in the name of Ghulam Nabi Bhat, a former teacher and father of Nabi.Bhat, who quit his job in 2012 due to some unspecified illness, was detained along with his wife after the name of their doctor son cropped up in the Delhi blast case.While the couple was released on Thursday, their other two sons continue to remain under detention in connection with the investigation in the case.A neighbour of the family who didn’t want to be named said that he heard the sound of three blasts at 12:30 AM, 1:30 AM and 2:50 AM. When the dawn broke, the targeted house had been reduced into a mound of rubble, he said.The blasts are also alleged to have caused damages to around a dozen other houses located in the vicinity of Nabi’s home.“I built this home after going through a lot of hardships. What was my fault? Who is going to compensate me now?,” the neighbour said, pointing to the smashed windows of his house.A woman sits outside her partially damaged house in Koil Pulwama. Nearly one dozen houses witnessed partial damage after authorities damaged Dr Umar’s house, the prime accused in the New Delhi blast case. Photo: Umar FarooqA team of security forces visited the site of the demolition again on Friday morning while media persons, who had come to cover the aftermath of the incident, were ordered to stay back.Some of the investigators were seen quizzing the anguished local residents.In November last year, the apex court held that the demolition of homes of suspects or convicts without following the due course of law violated the right to shelter, a fundamental right under the Indian constitution.The top court also termed the right to shelter as “an integral part of Article 21 of the Constitution” while ordering monetary compensation to the affected appellants whose houses were demolished in Prayagraj by the Yogi Adityanath government in Uttar Pradesh.The demolition in Pulwama comes less than seven months after security forces razed to the ground the family homes of at least nine suspected militants affiliated with the proscribed Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Toiba who were accused of being involved in the Pahalgam terrorist attack in April this year.A dusty mobile phone is seen on the floor at the house of a neighbour as authorities demolished the house of Dr. Umar, the prime accused in the delhi blast case. Photo: Umar FarooqIt was later revealed by investigators that some of the suspected militants whose houses were demolished were not involved in the Pahalgam attack.The massive blast in the crowded old Delhi area earlier this week which killed at least 13 people and injured more than two dozen has prompted fears of discrimination and communal backlash against Muslims in general and Kashmiris in particular in the country.Earlier this week, hateful anti-Muslim graffiti surfaced on the campus of the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) campus in Kolkata after the Delhi blast.The opposition groups have criticised the Bhartiya Janta Party-led Union government for its repeated security failures while the Union home minister Amit Shah vowed earlier this week to punish the perpetrators in a manner “that no one would even dare to think of such an attack in our country again”.With inputs from Koil, Pulwama by Umar Farooq