Incident
On 22 April 2025, five armed terrorists conducted an attack in the Indian territory of Jammu and Kashmir, killing 26 males and injuring more than 20 others, in the deadliest incident of its kind in India since the 2008 Mumbai attacks.
The attack was initially claimed by a little-known insurgent group, the Kashmir Resistance Front – which India believes to be a proxy for the Pakistan-backed Lashkar-e-Taiba terror group – though it later issued a denial. In an attempt to ward off military retaliation Pakistan can ill afford as it struggles with an economic and security crisis, the country’s prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, promised a “neutral, transparent probe” into the incident.
Indian security officials said TRF uses the name Kashmir Resistance on social media and online forums, where it claimed responsibility for Tuesday’s attack in Indian Kashmir’s Pahalgam area.
Lashkar-e-Taiba, listed as a foreign terrorist organisation by the United States, is the Islamist group accused of plotting attacks in India and in the West, including the three-day assault on Mumbai in November 2008.
“This is basically a front of the LeT. These are groups which have been created over the last years, particularly when Pakistan was under pressure from the Financial Action Task Force and they were trying to create a pattern of denial that they were involved in terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir,” said Ajai Sahni, head of the South Asia Terrorism Portal.
Investigations into the April 22 Pahalgam terror attack have revealed that Hashim Musa, the Pakistani terrorist behind the massacre in Pahalgam in India’s Kashmir, is a former para commando of the Pakistan Army’s Special Forces, according to ongoing probe into the terror plot.
Sources told that Musa, now a committed member of the banned terrorist organisation Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), was sent by its top leadership to Kashmir with a clear mission to launch attacks on non-local civilians and Indian security personnel.
“It is possible that he was loaned by the Pakistan special forces like the Special Service Group (SSG), to the LeT,” a security officer said.