Pahalgam LIVE: 500 Pakistanis leave India; demolitions continue in Kashmir

Mizoram Governor General VK Singh has appealed to the public to be patient over the Pahalgam terror attack, stressing that the government is taking action.

Singh, a former Union minister and ex-chief of Army Staff, was in Ujjain to address a function at Vikram University.

Asked about the cold-blooded killing of tourists in Pahalgam, Singh told reporters, “... the government is taking some action on it. We should all be patient and remain alert in future, so that if we notice anything unusual, we can detect it beforehand.”

Responding to a question about Pakistan’s reaction amid the tension between India and the neighbouring country, Singh said, “Why are you talking about Pakistan? Talk about our country.”

A National Investigation Agency (NIA) team on Sunday visited the family members of Bitan Adhikari, one of the 26 people killed in the Pahalgam terror attack, in Kolkata to record their statements.

The NIA team spoke to the members of the family of the tourist, who was shot dead in the Baisaran valley near Pahalgam in Kashmir on April 22.

The team on Saturday visited the residence of Samir Guha, another deceased in the Pahalgam terror attack, in Kolkata’s Behala area to record statements of his family members.

Three victims — Bitan Adhikari (of Baishnabghata, Kolkata), Samir Guha (Sakher Bazar, Kolkata), and Manish Ranjan (Jhalda, Purulia) — were from West Bengal.

Special teams of the NIA have started reaching out to eyewitnesses, including tourists who survived the deadly attack by terrorists in south Kashmir's Pahalgam, officials had said on Friday.

Initial investigations into the terror attack indicate that the number of terrorists involved could have ranged from five to seven. They were aided by at least two local militants who received training in Pakistan, PTI reported.

Pakistan wants the involvement of Russia and China in investigating the Pahalgam terror attack, according to a media report.

In a recent interview to Russian government-run RIA Novosti news agency, Pakistani Defence Minister Khawaja Asif said, “I think Russia or China or even Western countries can play a very, very positive role in this crisis and they can even set up an investigation team that should be assigned this job to investigate whether India or Modi is lying or he is telling the truth. Let an international team find out.”

He said Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif also proposed conducting an international investigation.

“Let’s find out who is the culprit and the perpetrator of this incident in India, in Kashmir, talk or empty statements have no effect. There must be some evidence that Pakistan is involved or that these people were supported by Pakistan. These are just statements, empty statements and nothing more,” Khawaja was quoted as saying by the news agency.

Meanwhile, a Moscow-based independent US analyst Andrew Korybko noted that not only has Pakistan denied India’s accusation, which was to be expected, but top officials surprisingly made two self-discrediting claims.

“Ishaq Dar, who doubles as Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, remarked that those who carried out attacks in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pahalgam district on April 22 might be freedom fighters,” he said.

“Whatever one’s views might be about the Kashmir conflict, it’s an indisputable act of terrorism to massacre tourists, not to mention on the basis of their religion. Speculating that the perpetrators ‘might be freedom fighters’ discredits bonafide freedom fighters across the world and tacitly justifies terrorism,” Korybko wrote in his newsletter on Substack, an online platform.

The second self-discrediting claim to be made by a top Pakistani official about the Pahalgam terrorist attack came from Defence Minister Khawaja Asif, who told Al Jazeera media outlet that what happened on that dark day might be a “false flag operation”, he said.

“Upon reflecting more on what Dar and Asif said, observers will notice a glaring contradiction in that the first strongly insinuated approval of the Pahalgam attack by speculating that the perpetrators ‘might be freedom fighters’, while the second strongly disapproves of the attack and blames it all on India.

“These scenarios are mutually exclusive and intellectually insulting, and the fact that top Pakistani officials can’t get their story straight suggests that they’re clumsily trying to cover up their side’s complicity,” Korybko wrote.

Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav on Sunday blamed “intelligence failure” for the Pahalgam terror attack and accused the BJP government of prioritising “propaganda” over addressing critical issues.

He demanded Rs 10 crore financial assistance and a government job for the families of each of the victims of the terrorist attack.

“The big question is how did the terrorists reach our home. This is a failure of the government. It was the result of intelligence failure. There were no proper security arrangements and forces could not reach there. Now people are also talking about Pulwama with Pahalgam,” he said at a press conference.