22th April 2025 will forever be remembered in India and in Kashmir as the day of a massacre.
The perpetrators are known as “The Resistance Front,” a smaller and lesser-known militant terrorist organization with connections to terrorist organization Lashkar-e-Taiba (or Lashkar-e-Tayyiba), one of the largest terrorist organizations in Asia. Lashkar-e-Taiba has conducted many attacks on Indian troops stationed in Kashmir in non-combatant positions and even on civilians. The most prominent are India’s September 11th: the 2008 Mumbai Attacks, otherwise known as 26/11, where 149 civilians, hospital and hotel staff, foreign nationals, and security personnel were killed in a three-day siege of India’s most populous city.
Lashkar-e-Taiba is also known for its connection to the Pakistani central government, especially with the intelligence agency known as Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI. The Central Intelligence Agency of the United States asserts that ISI supports the Taliban in Afghanistan. The ISI treats them like “good jihadis” who fight foreign influence in Afghanistan and wreak havoc on civilians and security personnel in Kashmir. “Bad jihadis” for Islamabad are those who want to disrupt Islamabad, not those who want to kill and maim others, according to the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States.
These statements are not emotional outbursts without backup. They are the complete opposite: logical facts with universally-recognized evidence. The United States government, a historical patron of Pakistan, was forced to send its military into Peshawar to find and execute Osama bin Laden, a Saudi terrorist who masterminded the September 11th attacks, which killed 2,977 people. In 2010, former Army General and President of Pakistan Pervez Musharraf even admitted to training Kashmiri militants, blaming the international community’s “apathy” to the dispute over Kashmir.
The Indian government has responded to the Pahalgam attacks with many measures, indicating the serious tone they are espousing in response to the attack. The Indus Water Treaty for cross-border water sharing has been suspended, all Pakistani military diplomats are being expelled from India, and Pakistanis in India on a visa are being given 48 hours to remove themselves from the nation.
Source: CNN
Even Pakistan’s ally, China, was quick to condemn the attack, saying, “We condemn the attack. China firmly opposes all forms of terrorism. We mourn for the lives lost and express sincere sympathies to the bereaved families and the injured.”
26 Indians, from all around the nation, were murdered. Here are the names of those martyred:
- Sushil Nathyal (Indore, Madhya Pradesh)
- Syed Adil Hussain Shah (Pahalgam Tehsil, Jammu & Kashmir)
- Hemant Suhas Joshi (Mumbai, Maharashtra)
- Vinay Narwal (Karnal, Haryana)
- Atul Shrikant Moni (Thane, Maharashtra)
- Neeraj Udhawani (Uttarakhand)
- Bitan Adhikari (Kolkata, West Bengal)
- Sudeep Neupane (Batwali Ropandi, Nepal)
- Shubham Dwiwedi (Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh)
- Prashant Kumar Satpathi (Malashwar, Odisha)
- Manish Ranjan (Bihar)
- N. Ramachandra (Kochi, Kerala)
- Sanjay Lakshman Lali (Mumbai, Maharashtra)
- Dinesh Agarwal (Chandigarh)
- Sameer Guhar (Kolkata, West Bengal)
- Dileep Dasali (Mumbai, Maharashtra)
- J. Sachandra Moli (Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh)
- Madhusudan Somisetty (Bengaluru, Karnataka)
- Santosh Jaghda (Pune, Maharashtra)
- Manju Nath Rao (Karnataka)
- Kastuba Ganvotay (Pune, Maharashtra)
- Bharat Bhushan (Bengaluru, Karnataka)
- Sumit Parmar (Bhavnagar, Gujarat)
- Yatesh Parmar (Bhavnagar, Gujarat)
- Tagehayling (Arunachal Pradesh)
- Shaileshbhai H. Himmatbhai Kalatha (Surat, Gujarat)
Syed Adil Hussain Shah, a Pahalgam native, was killed in his heroic actions to protect others during the attack. He was shot multiple times shielding tourists from the bullets of the attackers and even tried to disarm an attacker.
A United States-based Indian and one Nepali were also killed.
The wife of martyred Surat resident Shaileshbhai H. Himmatbhai Kalatha, who bore witness to this horrific act, said this about the attack: “A terrorist first came close to us and then shot my husband after learning that he is a Hindu. Just like my husband, other Hindu men were shot in front of their children. The terrorist was laughing after shooting my husband and did not leave the place till he died.”
This attack was blatantly religiously motivated and anti-Hindu in every way. These Hindus were executed ISIS or Taliban style, as an eyewitness reported: “As soon as we heard gunshots, all the tourists started running in search of cover at Pahalgam. Two terrorists eventually found us and asked all of us to identify our religion. They divided men in two groups – Hindus and Muslims. Then, they shot dead all the Hindu men, including my father, and ran away.”
This horrific attack serves as a reminder to us all of the dangers of terrorism. The right to practice religion without persecution and threat of violence is something still besieged by extremists around the world.
“For great men, religion is a way of making friends; small people make religion a fighting tool.”
- Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam
Written by Eshan Korat
