During a parliamentary address on Tuesday amid the ongoing discussion on Operation Sindoor, Union Home Minister Amit Shah informed the Lok Sabha that all three terrorists involved in the April Pahalgam massacre — which claimed 26 lives — were neutralized in a counter-terrorism mission titled Operation Mahadev, carried out on July 28.
According to Shah, the primary orchestrator of the assault was identified as Suleiman, while the other two operatives were named Afghan and Jibran. He stated that all three were senior operatives of the Pakistan-based banned terror outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba.
While initial reports of the trio being eliminated surfaced after an intense military operation near Srinagar on Monday, Shah provided the official confirmation in Parliament. He explained that their involvement in the Pahalgam attack had been corroborated by individuals in NIA custody who had previously provided shelter to the attackers. Upon being shown photographs of the deceased, they confirmed the identities.
However, Shah emphasized that the government did not rely solely on witness identification. Forensic analysis was conducted on shell casings collected from the Pahalgam attack site. These were matched with the weapons recovered from the militants killed during Operation Mahadev. The ballistic match, verified overnight at a Chandigarh laboratory, provided conclusive evidence linking the firearms to the earlier attack.
Shah also mentioned that the operation had been initiated on the very night of the Pahalgam incident.
The confrontation unfolded around 11 a.m. on Monday, when joint forces of the army, paramilitary units, and local police identified suspicious movement in the Mulnar region of Harwan. The operation escalated into a fierce gunfight in the dense Lidwas forests, located near Harwan on the outskirts of Srinagar, culminating in the elimination of all three armed terrorists.
