Questions Abound as NIA Dismisses Reports of Botched Investigation in Pahalgam Attack

New Delhi: With Jammu and Kashmir police’s probe under spotlight, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Tuesday (24 June) responded to allegations of a botched investigation and claimed that no local from Kashmir was involved in the Pahalgam terrorist attack.

The Congress has targeted the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Union government for “hastily” releasing the sketches of three terrorists allegedly involved in the Pahalgam attack, one of whom was identified by the J&K Police as a local Kashmiri.

The party also raised questions on the credibility of the investigation in the deadliest terror attack on tourists in Kashmir.

In an attempt to quell these questions, the NIA said on Tuesday that it has gathered a “substantial body of evidence” from eyewitness accounts from survivors, video footage, technical evidence and the J&K Police sketches “about the identities of the Pahalgam perpetrators”.

“All this evidence is being carefully analysed and [the] NIA has not reached any conclusions at this stage,” the NIA spokesperson said.

The agency dismissed the “speculative” and “misleading” reportage about the sketches and identities of the three terrorists involved in the carnage at Baisaran meadow on April 22.

Per the sketches released by the J&K police, two Pakistan nationals identified as Hashim Musa and Ali Bhai, and a local Kashmir militant Adil Hussain Thoker, who crossed into Pakistan on a passport in 2018, were involved in the attack.

Thoker’s house in Guri village of south Kashmir’s Anantnag district was among the nine residential houses of suspected militants which were arbitrarily demolished in different parts of Kashmir using explosives in the aftermath of the Pahalgam attack.

The ‘bulldozer justice’, which had rendered the suspects’ families homeless sparked widespread outrage and allegations that the punitive action by the authorities in Kashmir had violated the fundamental right of shelter guaranteed to the citizens by the Constitution.

In a statement on June 22, the NIA said that two local residents – Parvaiz Ahmad Jothar and Bashir Ahmad Jothar – had “disclosed the identities of” and “confirmed” that three Pakistani terrorists were involved in the attack. The duo had reportedly harboured the terrorists at a ‘dhok’ (seasonal house) at Hill Park in Pahalgam on the night of April 20.

However, instead of Thoker, the third militant was identified by the Indian Express as Suleiman Shah – another Pakistani national and the alleged mastermind of the Z-Morh tunnel attack in which seven employees of a private construction firm were killed by militants on October 20 last year.

The NIA spokesperson said that the Jothar duo had “knowingly harboured the three armed terrorists” and also “provided food, shelter and logistical support” to them.

“NIA, which has arrested the duo under Section 19 of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967, is further investigating the case RC-02/2025/NIA/ JMU, registered after the attack that shook the world on 22nd April 2025. Further investigations in the case are continuing,” the NIA statement said.

The two were produced before a special NIA court in Jammu on June 23, 2025 which remanded them to five-days police custody.

“The NIA assures that the investigation is being carried out with the highest standards of professionalism, and all aspects of the terror attack are being thoroughly examined. The identities and further details of the terrorists will be made public at an appropriate time” the agency said.

Thoker's name had cropped up in the Pahalgam investigation after a photo recovered from the phone of Junaid Ramzan Bhat – a Kulgam resident and a Lashkar-e-Tayyeba militant – showed him posing with three other Pakistani terrorists, two of whom are allegedly involved in the Pahalgam attack.

Bhat was killed on December 4 in a gunfight with security forces in Dachigam on the outskirts of the capital Srinagar.

Even as confusion prevails over the identities of the terrorists, some of whom were reportedly wearing masks on the day of the attack, reports said the J&K police had used the photo recovered from Bhat’s phone as the basis for making sketches of the Pahalgam perpetrators.

Alleging negligence in investigating the Pahalgam attack, the Congress had said that the conduct of the investigation agencies had raised “serious questions”.

“Who were the real attackers? Where are they now? And why haven’t they been brought to justice even after two months? It’s been two months since the Pahalgam attack, and the nation is still demanding answers,” the party said.

J&K chief minister Omar Abdullah also said on Tuesday that as per the NIA investigation, all the three terrorists who killed 26 civilians at Pahalgam were outsiders.

“It is a big revelation that no locals were involved. Two locals have been arrested who were forced by terrorists to give them food and shelter. Let the agency complete its probe,” Abdullah said.

Earlier, Shehzada Bano, Thoker’s mother, had told The Wire that their house, which was demolished five days after the Pahalgam attack, had been built by her husband and was not registered on Thoker's name.

“It is still registered in my husband’s name. If he [Thoker] was involved in the attack, then the demolition is perhaps justified. But who will compensate us if he turns out to be innocent?” she had said.

The family house of Asif Ahmad Sheikh, a suspected Lashkar-e-Tayyeba militant and a resident of Monghama village in south Kashmir’s Tral, was also demolished using explosives amid allegations of his involvement in the Pahalgam terrorist attack.

Sheikh’s sister Yasmeena had told The Wire that the demolished house had been built by their grandfather and her family had received their share of two rooms in the ancestral property. Both her parents and all her siblings were detained in the aftermath of the Pahalgam attack.

“If my brother was involved in the Pahalgam attack, what has our family got to do with it? Why are our parents being punished for no fault of theirs? They destroyed the house entirely," she had said.

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