The National Investigation Agency has arrested two Pahalgam residents for allegedly harbouring the terrorists behind the April 22 massacre, exactly two months after the atrocity whose perpetrators remain at large.

“The two men — Parvaiz Ahmad Jothar from Batkote, Pahalgam, and Bashir Ahmad Jothar from Hill Park, Pahalgam — have disclosed the identities of the three armed terrorists involved in the attack,” an NIA spokesperson said on Sunday.

“They have confirmed that they (terrorists) were Pakistani nationals affiliated to the proscribed terrorist outfit Lashkar-e-Toiba.”

It, however, remains unknown whether the trio, who killed 25 tourists and a local pony operator, are in the country at all. Nor has the government yet fixed accountability for the intelligence and security failure that allowed the killers to take their time picking and choosing their targets and shooting them with impunity.

Parvaiz and Bashir knowingly harboured the three terrorists at a seasonal dhok (hut) at Hill Park before the attack, the NIA spokesperson said.

“The two men provided food, shelter and logistical support to the terrorists,” he said.

Parvaiz and Bashir have been arrested under Section 19 of the anti-terror Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967.

Sources said the NIA had questioned nearly 2,000 people, among them eyewitnesses such as the survivors and ponywallahs. The Jammu and Kashmir police too had raided the homes of more than 100 suspected terror associates.

The arrests come a fortnight after the NIA raided 32 locations in Kashmir, including premises in Shopian, Kulgam, Pulwama, Sopore and Kupwara belonging to “overground workers” linked to Pakistan-based terror groups.

The raids were not said to be related specifically to the Pahalgam attack — they were part of a general crackdown on terrorist organisations and their offshoots, carried out in connection with a two-year-old case.

A day after the attack, security agencies had released sketches of the three suspected perpetrators, drawn on the basis of the survivors’ testimonies.

The trio have been identified as Asif Shaikh Fauji, Suleman Shah and Abu Talha from Pakistan. They are believed to be operatives of The Resistance Front (TRF), a Lashkar-e-Toiba proxy that claimed responsibility for the massacre but later disowned it when Kashmiris united in condemnation of the attack.

The three terrorists had the code names Moosa, Yunus and Asif and had been involved in earlier terrorist strikes in the region, including one in Poonch, sources said.

Security experts and military veterans have blamed the April 22 massacre on an abject intelligence failure, made all the more shocking by the huge deployment of security personnel in Kashmir, including officials from the Intelligence Bureau, military intelligence and police intelligence.

They have also flagged the government’s failure to fix accountability for past terror attacks, from Uri to Pulwama.

“The terrorists are still roaming free two months after the incident. The government is yet to fix responsibility for this grave security failure,” a military veteran told The Telegraph on Sunday.

“What happened to the Prime Minister’s vow to pursue the killers to the ends of the earth and punish them?”