Jammu and Kashmir’s security establishment appeared to have been lulled by a false sense of “normality” in Pahalgam and made the fatal mistake of assuming that militants would stick to their practice of not targeting tourists, leading to Tuesday’s mayhem.
The Telegraph spoke to a number of local stakeholders in Pahalgam and sources in the security establishment who said there was hardly any presence of forces in the area when the attack took place.
Pahalgam, including the ill-fated Baisaran Meadow, is flocked by tens of thousands of tourists, who include central government and security officials, all the more reason for security deployment during peak tourist season.
Three of the dead were from security and intelligence agencies and one from the railways. They include Lieutenant Vinay Narwal, a 26-year-old navy officer and a native of Haryana posted in the Southern Naval Command in Kochi; Bihar resident
Manish Ranjan, a section officer in the Intelligence Bureau posted in Hyderabad; and Indian Air Force soldier from Arunachal Pradesh, Corporal Tage Hailyang.
“The area in and around Pahalgam witnesses massive security deployment during the Amarnath Yatra, but no such arrangements are made for tourists. That is because they have been rarely attacked,” a police source said.
Anantnag district development council chairman Mohammad Yousuf Gorsi, also an elected representative from Pahalgam, said the health resort had not witnessed any terror attacks in recent years.
“Everything was normal here, and tourists have never been attacked before. Even in the past, when you had hartals at other places, not here. That possibly led to a feeling (in the security establishment) that such deployments were not needed. The situation warrants a change,” he said.
“As far as Baisaran is concerned, it is visited by some 4,000 tourists daily. But there were no deployments there.”
Another official in the tourism department in Srinagar said it was a distress call from a woman, whose husband was shot dead, that alerted the police, after which they swung into action.
“Ideally, their own men should have informed them. That means there were no security officials posted there. That gave them (militants) a free run to kill as many people as they wanted,” he said.
A police team was the first to reach the spot among the security agencies. Shortly afterwards, a large number of army men and ambulances were seen rushing towards the area.
A local, who is engaged in tourism, said it would ideally take people at least half an hour to reach the meadow from Pahalgam. “There is no road going to the place, which is 6km away, although tractors can ply on the rough road. It is the locals who took the lead in shifting the injured to the hospital — on ponies, their backs and tractors. Since the evacuation was not easy, the injured lost a lot of blood, which increased the toll,” he said.
A retired police officer said there was already massive evidence of a shift in militant strategy to take their battle against the security forces from the plains to the mountains.
“Our men have suffered a lot of casualties from militants hiding in the mountains. It was happening more in Jammu than in Kashmir, because of which some complacency has crept in. This is certainly a security breach. Just because militants were not attacking tourists, there should not have been any complacency,” he said.