NIA finds Lashkar-ISI-Pakistan Army nexus in Pahalgam attack, overground workers played big role

The Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), ISI, and the Pakistan Army were jointly behind the Pahalgam attack and overground workers played a major role in facilitating the attack, according to a preliminary report prepared by the National Investigation Agency (NIA).

The NIA, the principal federal counter-terrorism investigation agency, took over the Pahalgam case on Sunday.

The report further found that the handlers of terrorists who carried out the attack were based in Pakistan-Occupied-Kashmir (POK), according to News 18 India.

Sources have said that the NIA has found evidence that LeT, Pakistan intelligence service Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), and Pakistan Army hatched the conspiracy for the attack.

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The NIA in its preliminary report has noted that overground workers played the largest role in facilitating the attack. The NIA has prepared a list of all known overground workers in J&K and preparation of administrative and judicial actions against them are underway.

Overground workers are those associates of terrorist groups who themselves don’t carry out armed violence but facilitated such violence by supporting terrorists in a number of ways, such as arranging their stay, providing them with money, helping them with logistics, guiding them through the area, etc.

India has formally blamed Pakistan for the attack and has vowed to respond. In the initial FIR before the NIA took over the case, the Jammu and Kashmir Police had said that the terrorists were “acting on the instructions of their handlers across the border”. India has also taken a slew of steps so far, such as putting the Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance, expelling all Pakistan nationals, and closing the airspace for Pakistani flights.

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On April 22, five to seven terrorists killed 26 people, most of them tourists, at Pahalgam in Jammu and Kashmir. An outfit going by The Resistance Front (TRF) claimed responsibility for the attack. The outfit is a cover that LeT, a Pakistan-based and Pakistan-backed terrorist group, uses to portray its activities as that of a homegrown organisation. The police have released the names and photographs of at least three terrorists suspected to be involved in the attack.

The preliminary report has been prepared under the supervision of NIA chief Sadanand Date and will soon be submitted to the Union home ministry.

The NIA has so far recorded statements of around 150 people and conducted 3-D mapping of the site of the attack.

India has vowed to respond to the Pahalgam attack, which is seen as the deadliest attack since the Mumbai attacks of 2008. There are expectations that India would mount a cross-border attack at some point. For days, Pakistan has maintained that an Indian attack is imminent.

Last week, Prime Minister Narendra Modi switched to English at a speech in Bihar in an apparent attempt to tell the world of the Indian intention to respond to the attack.

“From the soil of Bihar, I say this to the whole world: India will identify, track, and punish every terrorist, their handlers, and their backers. We will pursue them to the ends of the Earth. India’s spirit will never be broken by terrorism,” said Modi.