A couple of months after 26 innocent people were killed in Jammu and Kashmir's Pahalgam on April 22, 2025, the Indian Army carried out an operation, eliminating terrorists linked with the attack.
The counter-terrorism success was announced by union home minister Amit Shah in the Parliament, who said that the operation was carried out jointly by the Army, CRPF and the Jammu and Kashmir Police on July 28.
Shah identified the three terrorists as Suleman, Hamza Afghani (Afghan) and Zibran. The encounter, codenamed ‘Operation Mahadev’, took place in the forested Lidwas area near Harwan, on the outskirts of Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir.
Among the three terrorists killed in the operation, Suleman was an ‘A’ category commander of LeT, and was involved in the terrorist attacks in Pahalgam and Gagangir. Union home minister Shah had identified him as the mastermind of the Pahalgam terror attack.
Afghan and Jibran were also category ‘A’ terrorists of LeT who were also involved in the killings of innocent civilians in Baisaran Valley.
Following the tragic incident on April 22, a security meeting was held a day after, attended by all the security forces, Army, CRPF and Jammu and Kashmir Police.
The first credible piece of information regarding the terrorists was received a month after the incident on May 22, 2025. The Intelligence Bureau (IB) received inputs regarding the presence of terrorists in the Dachigam area through a human intelligence, according to a press release by the ministry of home affairs.
Over the following month, the bureau and Army made coordinated efforts to confirm this information by using equipment made by agencies to capture ultra signals in the Dachigam area, Shah said.
The efforts succeeded on July 22 when one of the terrorists' signals was caught in the sensors, and their presence in the area was confirmed. The CRPF, personnel from Jammu and Kashmir Police, under the leadership of 4 Para, then surrounded and eliminated the three terrorists.
The National Investigation Agency (NIA), after the Pahalgam attack, arrested some locals who had given shelter to these three terrorists, Amit Shah had told the House last year.
Therefore, when the bodies of the three terrorists were brought to Srinagar, the four arrested persons identified them and confirmed that they had carried out the Pahalgam attack.
