Exactly one year ago today, families were sending wonderful pictures, cheerful updates from the beautfiul mountain meadows in Kashmir. By the afternoon of April 22, 2025, those same families were calling hospitals, morgues, and helplines in a desperate search for their loved ones.
The Pahalgam terror attack — which killed 26 civilians in the Baisaran Valley — did not just leave behind grief. It changed India's national security doctrine, triggered the most significant India-Pakistan military confrontation since 1971, and ripped open a debate about the meaning of "normalcy" in Jammu & Kashmir that the government had been carefully curating since 2019.
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What Happened on April 22, 2025?
Baisaran, Pahalgam is not easy to reach. The meadow sits at high altitude in the Anantnag district, accessible only on foot or horseback. That remoteness is partly why tourists love it — it's raw, green, and quiet, often compared to alpine Europe by travel bloggers. On April 22 last year, hundreds of visitors had made the journey up for a day trip.
At around 1 to 2:30 PM, four to six gunmen entered the meadow through the surrounding forest. They were dressed in camouflage-style clothing, and eyewitnesses reported that some initially posed as security personnel. Without warning, they opened indiscriminate fire on the crowd.
What made the attack especially brutal was its method. Multiple survivors and eyewitnesses reported that the attackers questioned people about their religious identity before shooting. Those who could not recite an Islamic prayer were shot at close range. Most of the dead were male, and most were Hindu tourists. One victim was a Christian. One local resident — a pony-ride operator who made his living taking tourists up the slope — was also killed.
Twenty-five tourists and that local resident died. Seventeen more were injured. The Indian Army, Jammu & Kashmir Police, and paramilitary forces launched search operations within hours, with helicopters deployed to track the militants, who fled into the upper reaches of the Pir Panjal range.
The attack marked one of the deadliest strikes against civilians in India since the 2008 Mumbai attacks.
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Who Was Behind It
The Resistance Front (TRF) — widely understood to be a proxy outfit for Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), a Pakistan-based group designated as a terrorist organisation by the United Nations — initially claimed responsibility for the attack, doing so twice: once on the day itself and again the following day.
TRF later retracted the claim, saying its social media accounts had been hacked and that the claim was falsely inserted. Pakistan echoed this, calling the attack a "false flag operation" staged by India. That claim was rejected by India and received little traction internationally.
India had been pushing for TRF to be listed at the UN's 1267 sanctions committee, with Pakistan consistently attempting to block those efforts. The Pahalgam attack became central to that diplomatic fight.
The Indian government officially linked the attack to Lashkar-e-Taiba leadership based in Pakistan, including TRF's head Sajad Ahmad Sheikh, also known as Sajad Gul.
The Repercussion
Within days of the attack, the Indian government announced a sweeping set of diplomatic and economic measures against Pakistan:
- The Indus Waters Treaty — a 1960 agreement governing water sharing between the two countries — was suspended by India. This was an unprecedented move with long-term implications for Pakistan's agriculture-dependent economy.
- All Pakistani nationals on Indian visas were deported. Their visas were revoked.
- The Integrated Check Post at Attari-Wagah was closed.
- Both countries closed their airspaces for each other's airlines.
- A diplomatic crisis deepened rapidly through late April.
Protests erupted across Kashmir, including in Srinagar, Pulwama, Shopian, and Pahalgam itself. Shops shut down in solidarity with the victims. Muslim leaders condemned the attack as a blow to Kashmiriyat — the plural, syncretic culture historically associated with the Valley.
At the national level, an all-party meeting was held in Srinagar on April 24. Leaders across party lines condemned the violence.
Operation Sindoor: India's Military Response
On the night of May 6 going into May 7, 2025, India launched what it called Operation Sindoor — a tri-service military strike targeting nine terrorist infrastructure sites inside Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Jammu & Kashmir (PoJK).
The targets included well-known Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed facilities:
- LeT's headquarters in Muridke, Punjab, Pakistan
- JeM's headquarters in Bahawalpur, Pakistan
- Facilities in Muzaffarabad, Kotli, Bhimber, Gulpur, Bagh, Chak Amru, and Sialkot
India used Rafale fighter jets armed with SCALP cruise missiles and Hammer bombs. The operation was described by defence analysts as the deepest and most extensive military campaign India had conducted since the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War.
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Pakistan responded with drone and missile strikes targeting Indian religious sites, including the Shambhu Temple in Jammu, a Gurdwara in Poonch, and Christian convents. The Indian military neutralised many of these attacks. A brief but intense five-day conflict followed — from May 6 to May 10, 2025 — before international pressure pushed both sides toward a ceasefire.
The United Nations urged maximum restraint. Iran offered to mediate. The United States, with Vice President J.D. Vance stating this was "not America's war," stepped back from active involvement. France, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and several other nations expressed solidarity with India.
Defence experts noted a critical shift: unlike in previous India-Pakistan confrontations, global opinion this time largely sided with India and framed the action as counter-terrorism, not as part of the Kashmir dispute.
What Has Changed One Year Later
Security Gaps, Unaddressed
Nearly a year after the attack, accountability at the ground level remains elusive. Questions about how the valley's famed tourist destination had no quick-response security infrastructure in place have not been answered with any public accountability. No visible action has been taken against security officials responsible for preventing the attack at the ground level. Senior officials and security commanders have been reviewed behind closed doors, but no transfers, demotions, or inquiries have been made public.
Tourism: Still Recovering
In the months after the attack, tourist arrivals in Jammu & Kashmir dropped by more than 50 percent compared to the same period in 2024. Several tourist destinations remained closed well into the second half of 2025. For the government, which had spent years positioning rising tourism as a symbol of Kashmir's normalcy post-Article 370, the collapse was particularly damaging — both economically and narratively.
Security has been visibly tightened at all major tourist destinations ahead of the first anniversary today. Preparatory meetings were held at the ground level. But the image of Baisaran as a safe, carefree destination remains damaged.
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Families Still Waiting
For the families of the 26 killed, the year has been defined by grief, waiting, and promises not yet kept. Priyadarshini Acharya, who lost her husband in the attack, said she had been told the government would provide her a government job, cover her child's education costs, and give financial support. She survives on a temporary job. Sangeeta Ganbote, who lost her husband Prasanta Kumar Satapathy, said the pain had not faded.
"Not a single day has passed that I haven't remembered him," Acharya said, according to ANI.
These are not isolated stories. Advocacy groups have flagged that while immediate financial transfers were made to families in several states, the longer-term commitments — employment, education support — have moved slowly or not at all.
India-Pakistan Relations: Still Fragile
The ceasefire that ended the May 2025 conflict has held, but the underlying tensions have not been resolved. Defence analyst Hemant Mahajan told ANI that India's military response was effective but Pakistan continues to rely on terrorism as a strategic instrument. Senge Sering of the Institute for Gilgit-Baltistan Studies described terrorism as the "bread and butter" of the Pakistani military establishment.
Diplomatic ties between the two countries remain at their lowest point in decades. The Indus Waters Treaty suspension has added a new and potentially consequential pressure point — one that affects agricultural livelihoods in both Punjab provinces.
Expert Perspective
The Observer Research Foundation's Special Report on Operation Sindoor, released in June 2025, described the operation as having "decisively altered the security dynamics between India and Pakistan." Carnegie Endowment analysts noted that the five-day conflict offered multiple military lessons — including the effectiveness of precision standoff weapons and the value of narrative control in modern warfare.
But they also flagged gaps: the need for better drone defence systems, the importance of civil-military coordination, and the fact that a five-day conflict with a nuclear-armed neighbour, however controlled, carries risks that do not disappear simply because it ended.
One Year On
A candle-lit memorial was held at several locations across India and in Pahalgam on April 22, 2026. Security has been deployed in large numbers across tourist areas in Kashmir. The valley is quieter today than it was before the attack.
The Baisaran meadow still exists. People still ride horses up its slopes. Tourists still come, though in smaller numbers. A memorial plaque has been put up at the site.
But the 26 people who were shot dead there — asked first to prove their faith before a gun was pointed at them — deserve more than a plaque. They deserve answers, accountability, and families whose basic needs are met. A year later, on all three counts, the work is incomplete.