Union Home Minister Amit Shah confirmed in Parliament that three top terrorists from the Pakistan-based proscribed group Lashkar-e-Taiba were eliminated in Operation Mahadev, launched in response to the Pahalgam terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir. The key mastermind was identified as Suleiman, while the other two were named Afghan and Jibran.
Reports of their deaths surfaced after an intense encounter near Srinagar on Monday. However, their involvement in the Pahalgam attack was officially confirmed only on Tuesday. Shah revealed that the National Investigation Agency (NIA) had already arrested individuals who had sheltered the terrorists. “The arrested individuals were shown the bodies and identified them as the ones involved in the Pahalgam attack,” Shah said.
To ensure foolproof confirmation, forensic tests were conducted on the bullet shells recovered from the Pahalgam attack site. The guns seized from the terrorists during Operation Mahadev were sent overnight to a lab in Chandigarh, where ballistic analysis confirmed that the ammunition matched the crime scene. “That confirmed their identities even further, and we were convinced,” Shah added.
He stated that Operation Mahadev was launched the same night as the Pahalgam incident. The encounter on Monday began around 11 am, when a joint team of the Army, paramilitary forces, and police detected terrorist movement in the Mulnar area of Harwan, near Srinagar. Acting swiftly, the security forces engaged in a heavy exchange of fire in the Lidwas forested region, resulting in the elimination of all three terrorists.
The success of Operation Mahadev is being seen as a major breakthrough in counter-terrorism efforts in the Kashmir Valley.
