The National Investigation Agency on Monday named Lashkar-e-Toiba chief Hafiz Saeed as an accused in last year’s Pahalgam terror attack, linking the conspiracy directly to the militant group’s Pakistan-based hierarchy.
A supplementary chargesheet filed before the NIA special court in Jammu charged Saeed in his individual capacity and as chief of the banned Lashkar and its "active proxy organisation", The Resistance Front (TRF).
The NIA had in December filed a 1,597-page chargesheet over the April 22, 2025, militant strike in Pahalgam, naming Lashkar and six individuals as accused. Saeed's name did not figure on that list.
The supplementary chargesheet provides details of Saeed's role in the conspiracy and supporting evidence collected through "meticulous investigation and on-ground examination", the agency said.
Militants had killed 25 tourists and a local guide in Pahalgam's Baisaran meadow, prompting India to fire at Pakistan’s terrorist infrastructure and key airbases, and Islamabad to retaliate with drone attacks and shelling.
An NIA statement said Saeed had been charged under various sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. The chargesheet also invokes the offence of waging war against India and hatching a conspiracy from across the border, the agency said.
The earlier chargesheet named alleged Pakistani handler Sajid Jatt along with three militants killed by the security forces during Operation Mahadev in July last year, and two local suspects who are under arrest for "harbouring terrorists".
It had also charged Lashkar-TRF as a legal entity for its alleged role in planning, facilitating and executing the attack.
The three militants — Faisal Jatt aka Suleman Shah, Habeeb Tahir aka Jibran, and Hamza Afghani — who allegedly carried out the attack, were killed in the Dachigam forests of Srinagar after a hunt that lasted more than three months.
Parvaiz Ahmad and Bashir Ahmad Jothar, the two local men named in the chargesheet, were arrested by the NIA on June 22 last year.
The NIA claims the two men had revealed the identities of the three militants involved in the attack, and confirmed that they were Pakistanis affiliated to Lashkar.
Many in the Valley believe that the militants had coerced the duo to provide shelter to them.
The government had detained thousands of local people in the operations that followed the Pahalgam attack, but released most of them later.
Security forces blew up homes of several suspected militants and their neigbours, although none of them figures in the chargesheet or supplementary chargesheet.