By: our correspondent
In the afternoon of April 22, 2025, a heinous jihadi terror attack took place in Pahalgam, a popular tourist destination in Jammu & Kashmir, India. The terrorists singled out their victims based on their religion. The main target were Hindu men. In certain cases, the terrorists even stripped some of their victims to ascertain their religion. The victims were also asked to recite the Kalma, or Shahada, which is the foundational declaration of faith in Islam.
In the attack, at least 28 people were killed and many were wounded. The armed terrorists executed their victims at gun point. The male victims were executed in front of their families, in many cases newlyweds. The attack was claimed by the Resistance Force (TRF), which is a proxy of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), a Pakistan-based Salafi-jihadi organization and UN-proscribed terror outfit. The TRF and its alias Peoples’ Anti-Fascist Front (PAFF) are acknowledged as a rebranding of the LeT to evade the sanctions imposed on the latter. This has been standard practice by the Pakistani establishment for plausible deniability for its involvement with terror entities and to safeguard them from international scrutiny and sanctions.
The Pahalgam attack is perhaps the biggest terror attack in Kashmir since August 5, 2019, when India quashed Article 370 of the Constitution, which accorded greater autonomy to Jammu & Kashmir. After India abrogated Article 370, there was a concerted effort by Pakistan to rebrand the established terror outfits such as LeT and Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM; a Pakistan-based Deobandi Islamist militant group) in order to present these new outfits as indigenous resistance groups active in India.
Meanwhile, tensions are growing between India and Pakistan. The Indian media outlet reported that Pakistani troops are continuing to violate the ceasefire along the Line of Control (LoC) by resorting to unprovoked firing in Jammu & Kashmir’s Poonch and Kupwara districts. As tensions flare, Pakistani Ministers threatened India with nuclear retaliation, stating that Pakistan’s 130 nuclear warheads have been kept “only for India.
It may also be noted that Hafiz Saeed is the founder of LeT; Maulana Masood Azhar is the emir of JeM, while Syed Salahuddin is the chief of Hizbul Mujahideen (HuM) – all Pakistan army-backed terror organizations active in Indian Kashmir. All these terror commanders are believed to be hidden by the Pakistani military. International Strategic experts also believe harboring of these terrorist chiefs by Pakistan to serve its purposes when ever required.
The ongoing warmongering rhetorics by Pakistan only indicate their nefarious hollow designs against the Indian establishment and an attempt to divert the international community of the internal issues within Pakistan. Pakistan must understand that the world is aware of what it has been doing and must abstain from such activities for the sake of humanity and world peace.