Srinagar: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday stated that the country will always remember the sacrifices of the innocent civilians who were brutally murdered by terrorists in Pahalgam last year, and he pledged that India will never submit to any form of terrorism.
PM Modi paid tributes to the 26 people killed by Pakistan-backed Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terrorists, “Remembering the innocent lives lost in the gruesome Pahalgam terror attack on this day last year. They will never be forgotten. My thoughts are also with the bereaved families as they cope with this loss. As a nation, we stand united in grief and resolve. India will never bow to any form of terror. The heinous designs of terrorists will never succeed.”
On April 22, 2025, tourists started their day at the Baisaran meadow of Pahalgam with families, including children. As the innocent tourists were moving around in the vast meadow, the rattle of automatic gunfire initially seemed like the bursting of firecrackers, but the reality of the impending tragedy soon dawned on the meadow.
LeT terrorists lined up tourists and shot them in cold blood. They left a woman alive as they shot her husband before her eyes. The terrorists, as per later reports, wanted the widow to narrate the horror to the nation.
A local pony wallah tried to argue with the terrorists, pleaded that Islam does not permit the massacre of unarmed civilians. But he was also killed. The aim of the terrorists was only to spread terror, and their masters had ordered them to kill innocents.
Taking the Army, police or the security forces head-on was neither in the courage of the killers nor their masters. The killers were identified through eyewitness accounts, human and technical intelligence, etc.
The attack shocked not just India but the whole world, which expressed grief. PM Modi gave a free hand to the armed forces to avenge the Pahalgam killings. ‘Operation Sindoor’ was launched, and without crossing the border, Indian armed forces carried out precision strikes at terror infrastructure in Muridke near Lahore, Bahawalpur and in Muzaffarabad of Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK).
No Pakistani defence facility was targeted in those strikes. Pakistan escalated the tension by targeting army facilities, the civilian population and infrastructure.
In the Poonch district of J&K, 14 civilians, including a senior civil servant, were killed in Pakistan border shelling. India retaliated by damaging 18 defence facilities deep inside Pakistan.
The perpetrators of the Pahalgam terror attack were hunted down by the Army, J&K Police and the security forces during ‘Operation Mahadev’. Launched on the foot of the Mahadev peak in Dachigam National Park on the outskirts of Srinagar city, in the joint ‘Operation Mahadev’ by the Army, CRPF, and J&K Police, all three terrorists involved in the Pahalgam attack — Suleman alias Faizal Jatt, Hamza Afghani, and Zibran — were killed.
The massacre of innocent civilians was avenged, but the scars left behind in the minds and souls of the survivors can never be fully healed.
(IANS)
