The 2025 Pahalgam attack, also referred to as the 2025 Pahalgam massacre, was an Islamist terrorist attack on tourists by three armed militants near Pahalgam in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir in which 26 civilians were killed on 22 April 2025. The attackers targeted Hindu tourists, though a Christian tourist and a local Muslim pony ride operator were also killed. The attackers, armed with M4 carbines and AK-47s, entered the Baisaran Valley, a popular tourist spot, through the surrounding forests. This incident is considered the deadliest attack on civilians in India since the 2008 Mumbai attacks. Scholars and analysts contend that the specific targeting of Hindus, the high civilian casualty of the massacre and its barbarity was aimed at exploiting 'communal fault lines' and elicit a reaction from the Indian government, compelling the government to respond militarily.
The Resistance Front (TRF), a proxy of the Pakistan-based Islamist UN-designated terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), with a history of attacks on religious minorities, initially claimed responsibility for the attack. It did so twice, on both the day of the attack and the next day. TRF released a statement that the attack was in opposition to non-local settlement in the region resulting from the abolition of the special status of Kashmir. After a few days, TRF denied its involvement in the attack.
The militants singled out the men and asked for their religion before shooting the Hindu and Christian tourists. The attackers also asked some tourists to recite the Islamic kalima, a Muslim declaration of faith, to identify non-Muslims. Of the 26 people killed, 25 were tourists, and one was a local Muslim pony ride operator who tried to wrestle a gun from the attackers. The tourists included several newlywed couples, and the men were shot point-blank in front of their wives.
The attack intensified tensions between India and Pakistan as India accused Pakistan of supporting cross-border terrorism and suspended the Indus Waters Treaty, expelled Pakistani diplomats and closed borders. Pakistan rejected these claims and retaliated by suspending the Simla Agreement, restricting trade, and closing airspace. A standoff between both countries led to a military conflict on 7 May 2025 when India launched airstrikes targeting alleged terror camps in Pakistan. India and Pakistan announced a ceasefire on 10 May 2025.
A manhunt was begun immediately after the attack to find the perpetrators. Having located them, an "Operation Mahadev" was launched in July 2025, in which the three militants were killed. The exact number of perpetrators has never been ascertained. The National Investigation Agency has filed a 1,500-page chargesheet detailing the results of its investigation, which links the dead militants to the attack.
Background
The Jammu and Kashmir insurgency began in the late 1980s, as part of the wider Kashmir conflict. Pakistan's role in launching the insurgency as well as in turning it into an Islamist militancy are well-documented in the scholarly literature. Violence and threats, including assassinations, massacres and arson, against Hindus by insurgents and militants has lead to a displacement of Hindus in the region, with thousands of Kashmiri Hindus having been displaced en masse from the Kashmir Valley. Instances of massacres of Hindu civilians by militants became frequent across Jammu and Kashmir in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when Pakistan-based groups assumed a central position in the insurgency. Central to this proxy campaign was the Pakistani military establishment's strategic doctrine of "Bleeding India with a Thousand Cuts" which is a covert framework designed to wage a low-intensity, asymmetric war using non-state actors to drain Indian resources and destabilize the region while maintaining plausible deniability.
In 2019, the Indian government revoked the special status previously granted to Jammu and Kashmir, and extended the Constitution of India to the state in full, enabling non-locals to purchase property and settle down in Jammu and Kashmir. Also related is the issuance of domicile status to residents who did not qualify earlier as 'state-subjects', qualifying them for jobs and college seats. While fears have been expressed that these changes would result in a change in demographics in Kashmir, with non-locals settling in the area, critics of the earlier arrangement noted that it had created a legal asymmetry: people from Jammu and Kashmir had always been free to settle anywhere in India, but in Jammu and Kashmir people from elsewhere were barred from permanent residency, property ownership, and government jobs. This disparity was cited as discriminatory by proponents of the constitutional changes, who also noted that the previous laws discriminated against women from within the region by revoking their property rights if they married a non-permanent resident.
As India tightened its security grid post-2019, the "Thousand Cuts" strategy evolved to adapt to the new political reality. A new militant group called The Resistance Front (TRF) sprang up in Kashmir, believed to have been sponsored by Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba, a UN designated terrorist group. By operating under an indigenous-sounding name, the TRF allowed its handlers to sustain the asymmetric campaign while shielding Pakistan from international financial and diplomatic sanctions. TRF has since been designated as a terrorist organisation in India and by the United States. It was formed from the cadres of LeT and Hizbul Mujahideen in Kashmir, and has carried out attacks on Hindu minority communities and economic soft targets like tourists to disrupt India's narrative of normalcy. The attack targeted a high-profile tourist safe zone to shatter New Delhi's narrative of post-2019 normalcy. It aimed to cripple Kashmir's tourism-reliant economy and provoke communal tensions across India.
Prior to 2025, the largest terror attacks in Jammu and Kashmir in preceding years were the 2016 Uri attack and 2019 Pulwama attack. India blamed Pakistan-based militants for both of them and conducted retaliatory strikes. In the weeks preceding the Pahalgam attack, India acquired the extradition of former Pakistan Army officer Tahawwur Rana, who was linked to Lashkar-e-Taiba and convicted (in the US) for supporting the 2008 Mumbai attacks. In response to these setbacks, the Pakistani defense establishment doubled down on its proxy rhetoric; Pakistan Army chief Asim Munir gave a speech describing Kashmir as "our jugular vein" and branding Hindus as being different from Muslims in every way via an appeal to the two-nation theory that lead to the partition of India.
The Indian government and media have long alleged that Pakistan supports militant groups such as TRF as part of this ongoing asymmetric warfare. Pakistan denies any support for militants including those involved in Jammu and Kashmir, officially maintaining only "diplomatic and moral support" for the Kashmiri people.
This attack was timed to coincide with a visit by the U.S. Vice President to India. Historically, Pakistan sponsored terror groups have executed high-profile strikes during visits by Western leaders to force international attention back onto the Kashmir dispute.
Attack
On 22 April 2025, at around 13:00 to 14:45 2-7 terrorists entered the Baisaran Valley meadow, which is located about 7 km (4.3 mi) from the Pahalgam town in Anantnag district. The area is surrounded by dense pine forests on all sides, and is a popular spot for tourists; it is only accessible by foot or horseback. The meadow is about 200m wide and 800m long. The area was not protected by armed security. The attackers carried M4 carbines and AK-47s and wore military-style uniforms. One wore a Kashmiri pheran. They had modern communication equipment and mounted cameras. An eyewitness said that they also took selfies.
The meadow is surrounded by a 2 m (7 ft) high chain link fence. There are two gates for entry and exit. The attack started with shots being fired near the exit gate. This resulted in the herding of tourists towards the entry gate where they were met by more terrorists. During the attack some tourists found gaps in the fence to escape. Some tourists were killed outside the boundary. Some tourists who were not able to scale the fence were helped by others. Other tourists ran in different directions trying to find a place to hide such as behind the mobile toilets. To escape the attack, a local photographer and videographer climbed a tree from where he continued to film the attack. An army officer on holiday helped to direct 35-40 tourists to safety. During the attack he managed to place calls to the local army unit and Army Headquarters in Srinagar.
The attack was inadvertently filmed by a tourist from Ahmedabad, who was ziplining during the attack. The video footage showed scenes of panic with injured victims pleading for help and bodies strewn across the ground. Another video of the attack was inadvertently captured by a tourist from Kozhikode who was waiting for a zipline ride; the time the video was taken was recorded at 14:25. Once realising the situation, he escaped by climbing over the fence and ran downhill. A local Muslim pony operator, Syed Adil Hussain Shah, reportedly tried to protect the tourists and wrestle the gun from one of the attackers before being shot and killed. Following the killings the terrorists fired shots in the air, supposedly either warning shots or celebratory in nature.
Targeted attack on Hindu tourists
The militants asked for the names and religions of the tourists, and specifically targeted those who were Hindu. The attackers killed the Hindu men after separating them from the Muslim men. Some tourists were asked to recite the Islamic verse of kalima so that the militants could segregate them by religion. Some Hindu men were forced to remove their trousers to check for a lack of circumcision before being shot at close range. Of the 26 dead, the trousers of around 20 were found to be unzipped or pulled down. The militants told some Hindu women that they had been spared so that they could narrate the horrors of their men's killing to the Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi.
The first tourist to be shot was newly married Shubham Dwivedi from Kanpur, who was visiting Kashmir with his wife. The militants approached the couple and asked, "Are you a Hindu or a Muslim?" and Dwivedi responded that "We are Hindus" and was shot point-blank in the head. Another newlywed victim was an Indian Navy lieutenant, Vinay Narwal from Haryana, who went to Pahalgam six days after his wedding with his wife. In a viral video of the attack, his wife is heard saying "a man suddenly came and said he's not Muslim... then shot him." The militants shot three bullets into Narwal's neck, chest and thighs "after realising he was a Hindu".
The daughter of a Hindu tourist from Pune recounted that militants asked her father to recite an Islamic verse, and "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 wife of another victim from Andhra Pradesh told the state's deputy chief minister Pawan Kalyan that she and her husband lay on the ground, and the terrorists asked twice, "Hindu hai, muslim hai?" (lit. 'Are (you) Hindu? Are (you) Muslim?'), and when they did not respond, her husband was shot dead. A Bengali Hindu professor from Assam, who hid his identity by reciting the Islamic kalima escaped the killing, while a Christian man from Madhya Pradesh was shot dead after being unable to recite the kalima. His wife said the attackers took selfies with the dead bodies. According to his son, there were 15-year-olds among the terrorists. Some of the terrorists also asked for ID cards to be shown.
Casualties
At least 26 people were killed in the attack, including 25 tourists and one local person, while 20 others were injured. Initially a list of the victims, which was verified by local officials in Kashmir, showed that 25 of the 26 killed were Hindus, while one was a local Muslim pony operator. Subsequently, one of the killed tourists was identified as a Christian. The full list of 26 victims with their names and state of residence was published by Indian newspapers.
The victims included 24 tourists from several Indian states and one foreign tourist from Nepal, while the one local killed was from Jammu and Kashmir. Witnesses stated that most of the victims were male, and the dead and injured included those from the Indian states of Arunachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra, Odisha, Gujarat, Haryana, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal. The dead include three Indian government officials: recently married officers from the Indian Air Force and Indian Navy, and an official from the Intelligence Bureau. One Christian victim was a resident of Madhya Pradesh.
Aftermath
In the aftermath, locals assisted in the rescue effort and offered shelter to victims. Members of the local pony-handlers association rescued 11 injured tourists on ponies and improvised stretchers. Gurudwaras in Kashmir opened their doors to shelter tourists fleeing the valley in fear, as many sought safety closer to cities and airports to return to their home states. Emergency services arrived at the scene after news of the attack reached district headquarters. Two critically injured victims were taken to the district hospital at Anantnag at around 16:30, while others were transported to nearby medical centres. The critically injured were airlifted to a military hospital in Srinagar by helicopter for further treatment. A helpline was established to assist affected tourists.
Nazakat Ahmad Ali Shah, a Kashmiri woollen clothes trader and tourist guide, helped to rescue several of the victims. He saved eleven people in a group, including the daughter of a BJP leader, by first taking two children to the nearby town of Pahalgam and then escorting the rest to safety. Nazakat Ahmad Ali Shah is the cousin of Syed Adil Hussain Shah, who died while saving the lives of many tourists in the attack.
The nearest CRPF base is around 4-5 kilometers from the Baisaran meadows. The trek is through a muddy and rocky track and takes 40–45 minutes. The CRPF commanding officer was informed about the attack by pony operators. 25 CRPF personnel reached Baisaran Valley at around 14:30 as first responders. They were followed by a police team after which efforts were coordinated. The first phone call to the police control room was later at 14:45.