The April 22 terrorist attack in J&K’s Pahalgam, which killed 26 civilians, was a carefully planned conspiracy by Pakistan’s spy agency ISI and terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), directed by the country’s political and military leadership, and carried out solely by Pakistani terrorists, according to security sources.
Described by sources as a LeT-ISI joint operation similar to the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) instructed Pakistan-based Lashkar commander Sajid Jutt to deploy only foreign terrorists for the targeted killings in Pahalgam’s Baisaran valley. To maintain complete secrecy, no Kashmiri militants were involved; instead, foreign LeT terrorists already active in J&K were ordered to carry out the attack with minimal local involvement, limited strictly on a “need-to-know” basis.
The Pahalgam attack team was led by Sulaiman, a suspected ex-Pakistani special forces commando who trained at the LeT Muridke base in Punjab, Pakistan. He crossed the LoC in 2022 carrying an M-4 rifle to enter the Jammu region. The squad also included two other Pakistani terrorists.
Satellite phone analysis showed that Sulaiman was in the Tral forest on April 15, placing him near the Baisaran attack site for nearly a week before the incident. He was also involved in the April 2023 attack on an Army truck in Poonch that killed five soldiers. After staying under the radar for two years, he carried out the ISI-LeT mission in Pahalgam. The identities of the two other Pakistani terrorists who targeted and killed 26 civilians— all men, 25 of whom were Hindus—have not been disclosed by sources.
Although J&K Police had initially suspected Pakistani terrorists Hashim Musa and Ali Bhai, the investigation has so far confirmed only Sulaiman’s involvement. There is no evidence linking local Kashmiri terrorist Adil Hussain Thoker to a facilitator.
“No local terrorist participated in the gruesome killings or was aware of the exact details of the terror plot,” a senior official told TOI. The two locals arrested by the NIA last month—Parvaiz Ahmad Jothar from Batkote and Bashir Ahmad Jothar from Hill Park, both in Pahalgam—are believed to have played a limited role by providing food, shelter, and logistics to the armed Pakistani terrorists for a few thousand rupees. Both have denied any knowledge of the plan to attack tourists in Baisaran.
