Three perpetrators of Pahalgam attack eliminated: Amit Shah announces in LS

Three of the terrorists who carried out the Pahalgam attack have been eliminated by security forces in a joint operation by the Army, CRPF and Jammu and Kashmir Police near Srinagar, Union Home Minister Amit Shah announced in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday.

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The terrorists were killed Monday in an operation dubbed Mahadev but officials had held back in identifying them conclusively as the Pahalgam attackers.

Participating in a special discussion on Operation Sindoor, Shah also attacked the opposition party for giving a "clean chit" to Pakistan for the April 22 Pahalgam attack. Had the Congress opposed Partition, the problem of terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir would never have occurred, he said.

Shah was referring to former Home Minister P Chidambaram's recent remarks that those behind the Pahalgam massacre could be "homegrown terrorists". Giving details of 'Operation Mahadev', Shah said the slain terrorists have been identified as Suleman alias Faizal, Afghani and Jibran.

"While Suleman was an A-category commander of Lashkar-e-Taiba, Afghani was also an A-category LeT terrorist. Jibran too was a notorious and wanted terrorist. All these three involved in the killing of our citizens at Baisaran valley in Pahalgam have now been eliminated," he said.

Shah said the identity of the terrorists was confirmed by those detained for sheltering and providing them with food ahead of the Pahalgam attack. The arms -- one M-9 and two AK-47 rifles -- recovered from the terrorists were flown to Chandigarh Monday night in a special flight for examination at the Central Forensic Science Laboratory.

The empty cartridges found at Pahalgam and those after test firing by the guns recovered from the terrorists were matched by the forensic lab, Shah said.