‘Will be able to sleep peacefully now,’ say family members of Pahalgam terror victims

The family members of the Pahalgam terror attack victims heaved a sigh of relief and praised the Indian government and security forces after Union Home Minister Amit Shah announced in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday that the three terrorists who had perpetrated the dastardly attack on 26 unarmed civilians were killed in an encounter with the security forces in Jammu and Kashmir on Monday. Shah made the statement after an NIA team confirmed the identity of the terrorists.

Asavari Jagdale, a resident of Pune, Maharashtra, whose father was among the 26 people killed in the April 22 attack, expressed her gratitude to the government and security forces on coming to know the news, and said, “I thank the Indian Army and the Indian government. Today, those 26 people will get peace. Today, we will also be able to sleep peacefully, and we hope that such an incident does not happen again, and peace prevails in the country. The government should continue operations like Mahadev so that such incidents do not happen again.”

Asavari was speaking to news agency ANI.

Similarly, Sangita Ganbote, wife of slain Kaustubh Ganbote from Pune, said, “We had faith in Prime Minister Narendra Modi that those who did this would be caught and killed. They were killed; it is a good thing. I thank the army.”

A major anti-terror operation was launch at around 11 am on Monday when a joint team of the Army, paramilitary forces, and local police detected suspicious movement in the Mulnar area of Harwan. The security forces engaged the terrorists in a fierce gunfight and killed three heavily armed terrorists in the dense Lidwas forest near Harwan, on the outskirts of Srinagar in Jammu and Kashmir.

Shah confirmed that the operation eliminated three top Lashkar-e-Taiba operatives, including the mastermind of the Pahalgam terror attack.

“Suleiman was the mastermind,” he said, adding that the other two terrorists were identified as Afghan and Jibran.

Speaking in the Lok Sabha, Shah slammed Congress leader P. Chidambaram while responding to his query about the origin of the slain terrorists in Operation Sindoor. Shah said that there was concrete evidence confirming the Pakistani origin of the killed terrorists.

“Voter ID cards and chocolate wrappers made in Pakistan were recovered from the bodies of the terrorists,” he told the House, asserting that these items clearly pointed to their nationality as he lambasted former Union home minister in a sharp attack and accused him of giving a ‘clean chit’ to Pakistan.