‘It seemed like an eternity’: What happened when terror struck Pahalgam’s Baisaran valley

Vinay Bai, a resident of Gujarat, was just entering the meadow when the gunshots first rang out. “I was on a pony, about to enter Baisaran, when there were gunshots. People started to run for their lives,” an officer quoted him as saying. “As I tried to escape, a bullet hit me in the elbow. I don’t know where it came from.”

Police officers who spoke to the survivors say they gave detailed accounts of how the attack unfolded. “Three to four men in ‘uniform’ descended from the dense forests. They asked for our names. We thought they were policemen,” an officer quoted a woman survivor as saying. “Suddenly, they opened fire on the men and left the women unharmed. They shot some of the men from point-blank range.”

Those who tried to flee were also gunned down as the terrorists opened indiscriminate fire, they said.

“One of the survivors told us that on hearing the gunshots, they ran to the tents pitched nearby,” said an officer. “He said that the attackers soon made their way to a tent adjacent to theirs and asked a man to come out. He said they talked to him, and then shot him.”

Another officer said the survivors’ accounts indicate the terrorists were present in the area for a substantial amount of time before leaving. “It seemed like an eternity,” one of the tourists told investigators. “They were there at least for 20 minutes, undeterred, moving around and opening fire.”

Baisaran valley is six and a half kilometres from Pahalgam but accessible only on foot or a pony ride. A six-kilometre dirt track connects Pahalgam to Baisaran valley.

With no vehicles around, shopkeepers and the tourist guides helped ferry the injured on the ponies towards Pahalgam. “By the time police arrived in Baisaran, the terrorists were long gone,” said a survivor.

Karnataka resident Pallavi Rao, whose husband Manjunath (47) was shot in the head, told a relative that when the firing first occurred, they thought it was an exercise of the armed forces. Like most other survivors, she said the attackers only targeted the men.