Two months after 26 innocent people were killed in Pahalgam in Jammu and Kashmir on April 22, 2025, the Indian Army carried out an operation to eliminate terrorists linked to the attack.
The counter-terrorism success was declared by Union Home Minister Amit Shah in Parliament, who said the operation was jointly carried out by the Army, CRPF and Jammu and Kashmir Police on July 28.
Shah identified the three terrorists as Suleiman, Hamza al-Afghani (an Afghan), and Zibran. The encounter, codenamed “Operation Mahadev”, took place in the forested Ledwas area near Harwan, on the outskirts of Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir. Here’s everything we know about the operation and how the army eliminated the mastermind of the Pahalgam attack.
Who are the three terrorists?
Among the three terrorists killed in the operation, Sulaiman was a Category A commander of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, who was involved in the terror attacks in Pahalgam and Gajangere. Union Home Minister Shah had identified him as the mastermind of the Pahalgam terror attack.
Afghan and Gibran were also Category A terrorists of Lashkar-e-Taiba who were also involved in killing innocent civilians in Paysaran Valley.
How were the terrorists eliminated?
Following the tragic incident on April 22, a security meeting was held the next day, attended by all security forces, Army, CRPF and Jammu and Kashmir Police.
It was then decided that the terrorists involved in the Pahalgam terror attack would not leave the country and escape to Pakistan, Shah said, adding that arrangements had been made to prevent the attackers from escaping.
The first reliable information about the terrorist group was received a month after the incident on May 22, 2025. The Intelligence Bureau (IB) received inputs regarding the presence of terrorists in Dachigam district through human intelligence, according to a press release issued by the Home Ministry.
Over the next month, the bureau and the Army made coordinated efforts to confirm this information using equipment built by the agencies to pick up super signals in the Dachigam area, Shah said. “Our officers and soldiers from the IB, Army and CRPF continued to move on foot in the cold and high altitudes to receive their signals,” he added.
These efforts succeeded on July 22, when one of the terrorists’ signals was detected on the sensors, and their presence in the area was confirmed. The CRPF, comprising personnel of Jammu and Kashmir Police, under the command of 4 Paras, then surrounded and eliminated the three terrorists.
How was the identity of the terrorists confirmed?
The National Investigation Agency (NIA), after the Pahalgam attack, arrested some locals who provided shelter to these three terrorists, Amit Shah told the House last year.
So, when the bodies of the three terrorists were brought to Srinagar, the four detainees identified them and confirmed that they had carried out the Pahalgam attack.
Apart from the terrorists, the rifles used in the attack have also been ascertained on the basis of the FSL report of the cartridges found in Pahalgam after the terror incident. The three rifles seized from the terrorists in Dachigam were flown to Chandigarh in a special plane and their spent shells were fired. Subsequently, the shells found after the Pahalgam attack were matched with rifle barrels and shells that came out after the firing, confirming the use of the three rifles seized in Dachigam.
