New Delhi:
Pune-based businessman Santosh Jagdale and his family were hiding inside a tent as cries for help and shots of gunfire rang through a tourist hotspot in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pahalgam.
The horror began when they heard firing from “people who wore clothes similar to those of local police” descending from a hill, his daughter Asavari recounted. She, her mother Pragati and her father Santosh rushed to a nearby tent, along with other tourists. They assumed the sound of gunfire outside was an exchange between the attackers and security forces. The sound of the attackers got closer as they fired at a nearby tent.
Then came a chilling command “Chaudhary, tu bahar aa jaa (Chaudhary, you come outside). Her father was pulled out of the tent by attackers, and the following exchange included the attackers blaming them for supporting Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Asavari said there were several tourists around, but the terrorists specifically targeted men after asking whether they were Hindus or Muslims. “They then asked my father to recite an Islamic verse (probably the Kalma). When he failed to do so, they pumped three bullets into him, one on the head, one behind the ear and another in the back,” the 26-year-old said, adding that the gunmen then turned to her uncle and shot him repeatedly. Police and security forces reached the spot 20 minutes later, she said.
Unaware of whether her father and uncle were alive, Asavari, Pragati and the relative were evacuated from Pahalgam’s Baisaran Valley by locals and security forces.
Mr Jagdale was one of the six people from Maharashtra who was among the 26 who died in the terror attack in Pahalgam on Tuesday. The other five were Atul Mane, Sanjay Lele and Hemant Joshi, all residents of Thane, Pune’s Kaustubh Ganbote and Navi Mumbai’s Dilip Dosale.
Mr Mane, 45, was a Senior Section Engineer in the Central Railways. His friend Vivekanand Samanta remembered that they used to travel in the local train together and had planned to visit Pahalgam together.
Mr Dosale was part of a group of 39 tourists from Navi Mumbai who had joined an organised tour to Jammu and Kashmir.
A couple from Nagpur and their son ran and never looked back, escaping just before the attack began at the Baisaran meadow. “This incident happened when we had just left the place of the incident. We could hear the sound of firing for a long time. Everyone was trying to escape from the place,” the man told ANI. As scores tried to exit from a single gate, measuring around 4 feet in width, his wife fell and suffered two fractures, one of them in the leg.
Those unable to escape found no place to hide in the wide, open space.
At Baisaran valley, often called ‘mini Switzerland, attackers opened fire as tourists engaged in leisurely activities. Choppers were deployed to evacuate the injured from the meadow, accessible only by foot. Locals also assisted in the evacuation, bringing the affected to safety on their ponies.
In the deadliest attack in Jammu and Kashmir since the 2019 Pulwama strike, the 26 dead included two foreigners and two locals. The Resistance Front (TRF), shadow group of the banned Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terror group, claimed responsibility.