New Delhi: At around 1.35 pm on 22 April, a family of four entered Baisaran valley and sat at a cafe near the entrance for some tea. Prasanna Kumar Bhat, his wife Rajani Kulkarni, his brother—an Army officer posted in Jammu and Kashmir—and his sister-in-law were a day-long trip from Srinagar to Pahalgam.
Originally from Karnataka’s Kopal, the four had left their children and parents, who were also vacationing in Kashmir, back in Srinagar. But it wasn’t going to be just another vacation for the four. They were about to witness the Pahalgam terror attack.
After tea, while Prasanna and Rajani clicked photographs in Kashmiri attire, his elder brother and sister-in-law sat in the open meadow, basking in the sun. They came together again around 2.20 pm, and began moving across the valley in the other direction.
That’s when they heard the first gunshots. But no one around them seemed to have paid attention. The other tourists went about their activities, children still zorbing and running around. Moments later, the thumps grew louder. It was then that Prasanna’s brother, the Army officer, realised that it was indeed the sound of gunshots.
“He said that it couldn’t have been the Army. There is no Army camp there, and they wouldn’t practice firing at such an uneventful time in a tourist area,” Prasanna recalled, speaking to ThePrint Saturday.
As the four spoke among themselves, the sound of gunfire got louder, and closer. “This was happening around 400 metres from where we were, near the entrance. My brother had already assessed that it was a terror attack. He was the only one who wasn’t panicking,” Prasanna, a 37-year-old software engineer based in Mysuru, recounted.
By 2.25 pm, the terrorists had unleashed horror in Baisaran valley.
As the firing continued, Prasanna’s brother jumped into action, instructing a group of 30-35 people around him to move slowly to take cover behind a mobile toilet.
“No one spoke, we all just followed him and moved there. After a while, the firing stopped and when I decided to take a sneak peek, I saw a body falling on the ground. People were running, there was chaos everywhere,” said Prasanna. Soon, the group saw a man in black attire with a head gear, carrying an AK-47 walking towards them.
“We started moving in the opposite direction. He was some 400 metres away from us. My brother assessed the situation, and understood that the firing was at the entrance point and so, we should move in the other direction. He guided all of us and we found an opening in the fence about four-five metres wide. He instructed us not to bunch up. We slid through the opening and came downwards towards the slope, beside a water stream. The terrain was muddy and slippery, but we had to run for our lives,” Prasanna told ThePrint.
The brothers and their wives had separated by then, as the Army officer had instructed everyone not to move in a crowd, and head for the forests.
The four were supposed to have lunch in the Rashtriya Rifles camp in Pahalgam later that afternoon. Mobile network was patchy, but with one bleak signal, the Army officer somehow made a call to the unit and alerted them to the attack, asking them to send the forces. He then made calls to the Army headquarters in Srinagar.
The sound of the gunshots continued till 3 pm, and then around 3.15 pm, the group spotted some local residents pass by, Prasanna said. However, they stayed put in the narrow pit under the cover of trees until they heard the sound of helicopters.
The Army and other security personnel then spotted them and guided them out.
At least 25 Indians and a Nepalese national were killed in the Pahalgam terror attack.
(Edited by Mannat Chugh)
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