Pahalgam attack: Why the buck stops with the Modi government

A day after 26 people were gunned down on the Baisaran meadow, Pahalgam town on Wednesday wore a deathly look as tourists fled the destination and the security forces continued their search for the attackers in the nearby woods.

The terrorists targeted tourists after asking their names to ascertain their religion, the police said. With the exception of Syed Adil Hussain, a labourer from Anantnag district, who earned his livelihood ferrying tourists to the site on a horse, an Air Force employee from Arunachal Pradesh, and a 58-year-old from Indore, all the dead were Hindu men. Hussain’s family told Scroll that the attackers had shot him three times after “he confronted one of the militants who had shot dead a tourist”.

The attack is a major setback to claims of Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party that terrorism ended in Jammu and Kashmir in 2019 after its special status under the Constitution was abrogated and it was divided into two union territories.

Opposition leaders have claimed that the attack was the result of a security lapse and demanded accountability from the Union home minister.

But a section of pro-BJP social media handles have pointed out that the terror strike – the deadliest since the Pulwama attack in 2019 – has taken place after an elected government took office in the union territory and not when the Delhi-appointed lieutenant governor was in charge. They have implied that Chief Minister Omar Abdullah’s administration bears blame for the situation.

How true is this assertion?

Who is in charge?

Over the last five years, militant violence and recruitment into militant groups in Jammu and Kashmir have sharply declined as the Centre cracked down on separatists and militant networks with an iron fist.

Even though there have been attacks on security forces and civilians including non-locals, the overall toll has been lower than in the years preceding 2019.

Before August 2019, when Jammu and Kashmir was a state, the entire security establishment, including the Army, came under a unified high command headed by the chief minister.

But in the union territory framework, the security establishment is headed by the lieutenant governor appointed by New Delhi.

The elected government headed by Chief Minister Omar Abdullah does not have jurisdiction over the law-and-order and security establishment. The intelligence agencies in the Valley report to the Centre’s representative, Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha.

If anything, since 2019, the Centre has only increased its control over the security establishment in Jammu and Kashmir.

For example, in 2024, the Ministry of Home Affairs brought the budget of Jammu and Kashmir Police under its control. Earlier, the erstwhile state’s one-lakh plus police force would draw their salaries and pension from the state budget.

“The security establishment usually prefers a governor’s rule as the political interference in the functioning is minimal,” conceded a police officer in Kashmir, who declined to be identified. “But from 2019, the police have been permanently under the control of the Centre.”

In fact, the Union Home Minister Amit Shah has held security review meetings from which Chief Minister Omar Abdullah has been excluded. Even on Tuesday evening, while Abdullah received Shah at the Srinagar airport and briefed him about the situation, he was not part of the security review meeting headed by Shah.

Why was Baisaran left unsecured?

Tourist spots in the Valley are usually secured by paramilitary forces such as the Central Reserve Police Force and Sashastra Seema Bal or the Jammu and Kashmir Police.

Surprisingly, there were no forces present at Baisaran, many eyewitnesses pointed out.

As a result, the militants had a free run of the meadow on Tuesday afternoon.

According to eyewitnesses, local residents, and not security forces, were the first to reach the meadow after the attack.

“Had there been a presence of security forces in the area, they could have retaliated,” a resident in Pahalgam told Scroll. “Maybe, the death toll would have been less than 26.”

At the time of the attack, there were about 500-600 tourists on the meadow.

Pahalgam has a history of militant attacks so it is not clear why security forces were not deployed in the area.

It is not the first time that tourists have fallen to the bullets of militants in Pahalgam. In August 2000, militants gunned down 32 civilians, most of them pilgrims, at Amarnath base camp. The dead included seven local Muslims.

In 2001 and 2002, the militants again targeted Amarnath pilgrims in Pahalgam, killing at least 24.

Despite this bloody history, the Baisaran meadow – only about 50 km from the Amarnath shrine – seems to have remained off the grid of security deployment in Pahalgam.

One possible explanation for the lack of security in Baisaran, a security official said, is that the meadow does not fall on the axis of the holy cave shrine of Amarnath. “The usual practice is to secure the route to Amarnath holy shrine,” he said. “Maybe, the deployment in Baisaran was not accorded the similar priority.”

Hard-to-reach terrain

How did the militants manage to reach the Baisaran meadows undetected? No official explanation has been forthcoming but the terrain offers some answers.

Baisaran is a lush green meadow surrounded by dense forests on all sides, which can be reached after trekking 3 km-4 km from Pahalgam through hilly terrain.

Towards the south of Baisaran lies the hills of Kokernag, and further east are the snow-bound mountains of Kishtwar.

A part of Jammu’s Chenab valley region, Kishtwar district has been a theatre of high-profile precision strikes by militants on security forces in the last few years.

Less than two weeks ago – on April 12 – security forces gunned down three militants, including a top commander of Jaish-e-Muhammad militant group, in the Chhatroo forest area of Kishtwar district.

‘Peace a distant dream’

The Modi government has received huge diplomatic support from across the globe with countries such as the United States, Russia and France offering their support.

New Delhi has vowed that those behind the attack will not be spared. “The accused will soon see a loud and clear response, I want to assure the country,” Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said on Wednesday.

For political observers in Kashmir, the attack has turned the spotlight on the flashpoint between India and Pakistan. “The attack is a reminder that Kashmir remains a troubled paradise,” said a political commentator in Srinagar, asking not to be identified. “Peace in Kashmir remains a distant dream."

However, a veteran Kashmiri journalist who has covered Kashmir’s insurgency since its onset in the late 1980s pointed out that this was the first time in his memory that Kashmiris had protested on such a scale against an attack.

The Kashmir Valley observed a spontaneous shutdown on Wednesday against the Pahalgam tourist killings – a rare instance of popular condemnation of targeted killings of civilians.

“It's not that Kashmiris haven’t protested against militants in the past,” the journalist said. “But most of those reactions were localised and specific to the areas where militants had carried out such acts. This is the first in a long time where people want to condemn a militant-driven killing at such a large scale.”

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Why Baisaran was the ideal spot to try to derail J&K’s journey to peace