Baisaran Bloodbath: The Terror That Exposed India’s Empty Boasts

The location of the attack was Baisaran, just off Pahalgam, in northeastern Anantnag district. Pahalgam is all about lofty mountains, evergreen forests, and deep vales crossed by springs and the rivers Lidder and Betab. If Kashmir is known as ‘India’s Switzerland’, Baisaran is further exalted as Kashmir’s ‘mini-Switzerland’.

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The attack happened exactly 15 days after the Union home minister had boasted, after a three-day visit to Kashmir, that the “the entire terror ecosystem nurtured by elements inimical to our country in J&K has been crippled”. The flabbergasting cluelessness of it all.

Chandanwari in Pahalgam is the starting point of the annual Hindu Amarnath pilgrimage. Baisaran is just 3.5 km from Chandanwari. When Chandanwari is overwhelmed by pilgrims congregating thickly to begin their trek to Amarnath, some of the spillover is accommodated in Baisaran, even though the approach road to Baisaran is dauntingly muddy and rocky, and traversable only on foot or by mules.

The Amarnath Yatra, due to commence in July, has always been a harrowing pilgrimage, not just physically daunting but also as a tempting target for terrorists—for whom any way stop on the route is a bullseye. The Amarnath Yatra has been attacked at least four times since 2000. All the attacks occurred during BJP governments at the Centre—August 2000, July 2001, July/August 2002 (Vajpayee government), and July 2017 (Modi government).

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Of the 10 major terrorist attacks in J&K since 2000, eight have happened during BJP dispensations at the Centre.

If terrorists want to send a message to the Indian state about the Amarnath Yatra, Baisaran fits the place profile.

The Resistance Front (TRF), set up in October 2019, months after the abrogation of Article 370 of the Constitution, and a breakaway from the Hizbul Mujahideen (HM) and the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), is being reported by the Indian media as having claimed responsibility for the massacre.

TRF has a reputation for stony ferocity. During a weeklong encounter with security forces in September 2023, TRF lost one, and the security forces five, including a colonel, a major, and a DSP (according to the SF). TRF, meanwhile, said that two of its foot soldiers had been eliminated, along with 20 Indian security personnel.

Nonetheless, TRF’s initial claiming of responsibility for the Baisaran massacre could be kneejerk, self-aggrandizing 𝘒𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘨𝘢𝘩 𝘣𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘰𝘭𝘰. Following the attack on a passenger bus packed with Hindu pilgrims in Reasi in June 2024, in which nine pilgrims were killed after it rolled into a gorge trying to flee the gunfire, TRF chest-thumped that it was the executioner—before withdrawing its claim. The J&K Police went on to pin the responsibility on the LeT.

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The Indian media has been reporting that TRF stated in a social media post after the Baisaran attack:

“More than 85,000 domiciles have been issued to non-locals, creating a pathway for demographic change in Indian-occupied Jammu and Kashmir. These non-locals arrive posing as tourists, obtain domiciles, and then begin to act as if they own the land. … Consequently, violence will be directed toward those attempting to settle illegally.”

But here’s the thing: I haven’t been able to track down this TRF social media post. 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘒𝘢𝘴𝘩𝘮𝘪𝘳 𝘑𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘯𝘢𝘭 (@TheKashmirJrnl), which claims to be “Independent media from Kashmir”. The account was created as recently as March 2025, has a paltry 765 followers, and does not have a blue tick.

This is the suspicious X account from which the Indian media has been sourcing its commentary on the TRF’s malefaction. The current statement—such as it is—has not been issued on the TRF letterhead.

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Something smells off.

And the purported TRF statement makes no logical sense. Baisaran is a popular destination for day tripping honeymooners, trekkers, and adventure heads—not people seeking to settle in Kashmir. Then, again, terrorism in J&K (and the state’s pre response and retaliation to it) is often about shock and awe, not horse-sense.

The video of Kashmiris protesting that very night the impunity of terrorists, and grieving the innocents at Baisaran, brings a measure of reparative balance. But nothing will temper the bleak picture of the Indian state’s failure to protect its citizenry from terrorism, even as it boasts about having brought normality to a state that it turned, virtually overnight six years ago, into India’s largest Union Territory, stripping it of its autonomy and flooding it edge-to-edge with security personnel from other states prepped and primed to be jaundiced.

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The question that must inevitably follow is: in this instance, where did the national and state security forces embedded in J&K go just three months before the commencement of the Amarnath Yatra? Why was the security presence in Pahalgam so thinned-out that a brazen assault like this could occur without a single SF personnel around, in a state where you can’t turn a corner without ramming up against a security post manned by heavily-armed, peremptory jobs worths in camouflage and body armour?

What gives?

Before the Mad Madari’s visit to Srinagar on 19 April 2025 was cancelled (due to an apprehension of inclement weather—which I don’t for a moment believe a word of), the SF and the police had begun fine combing and search operations throughout J&K. The security superstructure was put on maximum alert, with searches expanding especially in the districts of Kathua, Udhampur, Reasi, Ramban, and Poonch.

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And they let Pahalgam lie exposed?

Desolating as this tragedy is—no noncombatant deserves to be butchered, ever, anywhere, by anyone, no matter of which belief or political persuasion—this question must be asked: Why is the incumbent Indian state always missing when it comes to protection? Not of itself, which it does with remorseless carte-blanche muscularity; but of the citizenry, which it does with its conspicuous absence.

If this attack on innocents was designed to coincide with US veep JD Vance’s ongoing visit to India and catch his attention, it undoubtedly did—but not favourably for the Indian government. To a muscle flexing America full of belief in its own invulnerability, this appalling attack just shows how vincible the Indian state is, despite its habitually self congratulatory bellicosity.

And innocents must die to expose the impotence of the state.

Photo Credit: Imran Nissar

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