NIA arrests 3 in Nalagarh police station IED blast
The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has arrested three people in connection with the improvised explosive device (IED) explosion at Nalagarh Police Station in Himachal Pradesh. These are the first arrests in the case.
The accused are Mahavir Kumar, also known as Kaka, Ajay Mehra, and Manpreet Singh, also known as Mani. The agency said their suspected involvement was discovered during the investigation. According to the NIA, these arrests are part of efforts to uncover a larger conspiracy behind what it describes as a terror act. The blast took place on January 1 at about 9:40 a.m. near the outer wall next to the investigating officer's room at Nalagarh police station in Solan district. The case was first registered as FIR No. 02/2026 at that station.
The NIA later took over the investigation and, on May 8, re-registered the case as RC-27/2026/NIA/DLI under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, the Explosive Substances Act, and the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. The three accused were brought before the Special NIA Court in Shimla. The court sent Kumar and Mehra to eight days of police custody and placed Singh in judicial custody. The agency said it is still working to find and arrest others involved in the conspiracy and to uncover the larger network behind the attack. Nalagarh is an industrial town in the Shivalik foothills and is a gateway into Himachal Pradesh from the plains. The police station is in a busy part of town. The explosion on New Year's morning turned a local crime case into a federal terror investigation after the NIA took charge in May. The official record remains brief and factual.
In its statement, the NIA has not explained the specific roles of each accused, only that their involvement was discovered during the investigation. The agency has not named any co-conspirators who are still at large, nor has it released a chargesheet. So far, it has only said that these are the first three people arrested in this case and that the investigation is ongoing.
The state police filed the original FIR on the day of the blast. The state police filed the original FIR on the day of the blast. When the NIA re-registered the case months later, it brought the matter under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and moved custody and trial to the special court in Shimla.
The arrests in August marked the point when the national agency officially took the three men into its own case, brought them before its court, and secured police custody for two of them. The court will next review the progress of questioning during the eight-day remand for Kumar and Mehra. Singh remains in judicial custody, with bail requests pending and further hearings scheduled.
