Dossier listing details of Pahalgam attackers in works to expose Pak lies

“Though no passports were recovered, the Pakistan's National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA)-linked data and voter IDs leave little doubt of their nationality and official ties,” the source told The Tribune.

Three months after the brutal massacre of 26 civilians, mostly Hindu tourists, in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pahalgam, the security forces on July 28 neutralised the three Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) terrorists--Suleman Shah Faizal Jatt, Abu Hamza “Afghan” and Yasir “Jibran”--who had orchestrated the barbaric attack.

Forensic and intelligence evidence has conclusively established that all the three terrorists were Pakistani nationals, with no involvement of local Kashmiri militants in the actual shooting. However, two locals--Parvaiz and Bashir Ahmad Jothar--had given them overnight shelter.

Codenamed Operation Mahadev, the encounter took place in the densely forested Dachigam-Harwan belt, where the trio had been hiding since the April 22 carnage in Baisaran meadow. "All three had infiltrated into India in 2022 through the Gurez sector and had been operating covertly under Lashkar’s direct command from Pakistan," an officer said.

Two laminated voter ID slips issued by Pakistan’s Election Commission were recovered on the bodies of Suleman Shah and Abu Hamza, bearing serial numbers linked to electoral rolls in Lahore and Gujranwala. More damning was a micro-SD card salvaged from a damaged satellite phone, which contained biometric data from Pakistan’s NADRA.

“The database confirmed the Pakistani citizenship of all three men and listed family addresses in Changa Manga (Kasur) and Koiyan village near Rawalakot in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir," the officer said. Investigators also recovered chocolate wrappers of CandyLand and ChocoMax, brands manufactured in Karachi, from the rucksack used to store spare ammunition. The lot numbers on the wrappers were traced to a May 2024 consignment delivered to Muzaffarabad, adding another layer of physical evidence pointing to their Pakistani origin.

The weaponry recovered in the July operation included one M4 carbine and two AK-47 rifles. Ballistics tests have established a 100 per cent striation match between the rifles and the shell casings recovered from the Baisaran site. "We found a blood stain on a torn shirt at the Baisaran attack site. From the blood stain, mitochondrial profiles were extracted and they were identical to the DNA of the three bodies recovered in Dachigam," the officer said.

Interestingly, a Huawei satellite phone used by the terrorists remained active and was traced pinging the Inmarsat-4 F1 satellite network almost every night between April 22 and July 25. Triangulation of the signal helped the security forces narrow down the search grid to a 4-square-km section of Harwan forest, ultimately leading to the July 28 encounter.

The officer also clarified the initial confusion over the attackers’ identities, after the Jammu and Kashmir Police released sketches of suspected terrorists Hashim Musa, Talha and Adil Hussain Thoker on April 24. "The sketches were based on an unrelated photograph recovered from a December 2024 shootout. The actual perpetrators were only correctly identified after Operation Mahadev," he said.

Further linking the attack to Lashkar's command structure in Pakistan, voice samples extracted from the recovered sat-phone matched Sajid Saifullah Jatt, Lashkar’s south Kashmir operations head and a resident of Changa Manga near Lahore.

Another senior LeT commander, Rizwan Anees from Rawalakot, was filmed organising funeral prayers for the slain attackers on July 29. "The footage, shot by local residents, has been added to India’s evidence dossier," he said.