The terrorist strike that took place in Pahalgam, Jammu and Kashmir on April 22 and led to the killing of 26 civilians was part of a secret operation planned by Pakistan’s intelligence agency ISI and the Lashkar-e-Taiba terror group on the orders of Pakistan’s top political and military leadership and was carried out entirely by Pakistani terrorists according to sources in the security establishment.

Sources said the plan was a joint effort by ISI and LeT, similar to the 26/11 Mumbai attacks. They added that ISI had directly instructed Lashkar commander Sajid Jutt, based in Pakistan, to use only foreign terrorists for the killings in Baisaran valley near Pahalgam. To maintain complete secrecy, no Kashmiri terrorists were involved, and only LeT foreign operatives who had been active in Jammu and Kashmir were told to carry out the attack with minimal involvement of locals based on a "need to know" principle.

The group responsible for the Pahalgam attack was led by Sulaiman, who is believed to be a former Pakistani special forces commando and had trained at the Lashkar headquarters in Muridke in Punjab province before he crossed the Line of Control in 2022 with an M4 rifle and entered the Jammu region. The team also included two other Pakistani terrorists.

Satellite phone data showed that Sulaiman was near the Tral forest area on April 15, which means he was close to the site of the Baisaran attack for nearly a week before it happened.

Sulaiman was also part of an earlier attack in April 2023 when an Army truck was ambushed in Poonch, killing five soldiers, but he remained hidden for the next two years before carrying out this mission under orders from ISI and LeT. The names of the other two Pakistani terrorists who fired at the civilians have not been revealed by the sources, but they said all the victims were men, and 25 of them were Hindus.

Although the Jammu and Kashmir Police had earlier suspected that Pakistani terrorists Hashim Musa and Ali Bhai might have been involved, the investigation has so far confirmed only Sulaiman’s role. There is also no proof yet of local Kashmiri terrorist Adil Hussain Thoker being involved as a facilitator.

"No local terror operative had been involved in the brutal murder or was party to exact information of the terror plan," a top official informed ToI. Even the two locals arrested last month by the National Investigation Agency, Parvaiz Ahmad Jothar from Batkote and Bashir Ahmad Jothar from Hill Park area in Pahalgam, are believed to have played only a small role by giving shelter, food and basic help to the armed Pakistani terrorists for a small payment. They also told investigators they had no idea the plan was to target tourists in Baisaran.

The attack came as a surprise because terrorists usually do not target tourists in the Kashmir Valley. The place where the incident took place was an open meadow without any built structure or shelter, and there was no space for the security forces to keep a permanent presence there. Tourists had started visiting Baisaran only three days before the attack, once the rains had stopped. The site had been given on lease by the Jammu and Kashmir Tourism Development Corporation to a private contractor for three years, but full payment had not been received, so the required clearances had not yet been issued to officially open the site to tourists.

At present, there are around 68 foreign terrorists and three local terrorists active in the Valley and only one new local terror recruitment has been recorded so far this year.