TCN Correspondent
Srinagar (Jammu and Kashmir): When Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government stripped the state of Jammu and Kashmir of its autonomy and split it into two Union Territories, placing it under direct control of the Centre, it claimed the region would transform from a “terror hotspot” into a “tourist hotspot”. To a large extent, it did.
In just over three months this year, more than half a million tourists visited the valley, many reassured by the government’s repeated claims of safety. That sense of security lasted — until this morning.
Early Tuesday afternoon, suspected militants opened fire on civilians at Baisaran meadow, a scenic spot in the hill station of Pahalgam in South Kashmir. Local authorities believe most of the victims were tourists. The attack timed with the visit of U.S. Vice President JD Vance to India.
According to sources in the Jammu & Kashmir Police, at least 27 civilians have been killed and several dozen injured in the attack. However, the government and the police have yet to officially confirm the final casualty count or the identities of those killed. Jammu and Kashmir’s Chief Minister, Omar Abdullah, stated that “the death toll is still being ascertained”.
As security forces and civil administration work to stabilise the situation in the valley, the exact details of the attack remain unclear.
Baisaran, located about 3 kilometers from the popular tourist place of Pahalgam — which is also a starting point for the sacred Amarnath Yatra — has grown increasingly popular among domestic tourists in recent years, due to its picturesque scenery.
The attack has sent shockwaves across the Kashmir Valley and the rest of India. In the immediate aftermath, Jammu and Kashmir’s Lieutenant Governor announced that an “anti-terror operation was launched to neutralise the terrorists”.
In view of the incident, Union Home Minister Amit Shah arrived in Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir’s summer capital, to assess the situation and conduct a high-level security review.
According to a ponytail operator in Baisaran, the incident was nothing short of an apocalypse. “It felt like doomsday,” said Manzoor, a pony operator in Baisaran.
Speaking to Twocircles.net, he recounted the moment he learned of the attack. “Some of my friends were with horses in Baisaran,” Manzoor said. “Around 2:30 pm, one of them called me and said someone was firing indiscriminately at them. He informed me that the tourist lady riding his horse was severely injured and she wouldn’t survive.”
He said he could hear the sounds of gunfire over the phone. “Within minutes, people with blood-stained clothes started appearing where I was waiting for customers, further down from Baisaran,” he recalled. “Most of them were injured. How can anyone be so inhumane?”
He added: “Unlike other days, today tourists were more in number in Baisaran.”
According to an eyewitness who was at a local hospital in Pahalgam, the scenes were horrific. “I had gone to get some blood tests done,” the eye witness, who requested anonymity, told Twocircles.net. “As I arrived, the bodies began coming in. They were mostly tourists and killed in the most horrific and despicable manner.”
If the casualty figures reported by sources are to be believed, the attack on tourists in Baisaran marks the deadliest and most brutal militant attack on civilians in the region since the 2003 Nadimarg massacre.
In 2003, eight gunmen dressed in fatigues uniforms arrived at the Nadimarg village in South Kashmir and ordered its Kashmiri Pandit residents outside. They then opened fire with automatic weapons on those who complied. When the gunmen left, of the 52 Pandits living in the village, 24 were dead, including 11 women and 2 children.
It is pertinent to mention here that after 2019, the relatively calm Jammu division of J&K found itself in militancy’s line of fire, while the security establishment’s crackdown on the militancy network had seen a significant dip in militancy in the Kashmir Valley. However, going by the figures, the attack on civilians in Baisaran has been the worst the region has recorded after 2019.
Prime Minister Modi said that those responsible for the attack will not be spared. “Their evil agenda will never succeed,” PM Modi said on X. “Our resolve to fight terrorism is unshakable and it will get even stronger.”
India’s opposition leader in the Parliament and Congress leader, Rahul Gandhi, said that the attack was “extremely condemnable and heartbreaking.”
However, he also criticised the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) for spreading false claims of normalcy in Kashmir. “Instead of making hollow claims of the situation being normal in Jammu and Kashmir, the government should now take accountability and take concrete steps so that such barbaric incidents do not happen in the future and innocent Indians do not lose their lives like this,” Gandhi said on X.
The president of J&K Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and former Chief Minister, Mehbooba Mufti, has called for a complete Kashmir shutdown in the aftermath of the Baisaran attack.