New Delhi: If not for a landslide that blocked the Jammu-Srinagar highway on 19 April, 54-year-old Santosh Jagdale, his friend, and their families—all from Pune—would have arrived in Pahalgam for their holiday Monday.
But fate had other plans. Instead, the group of five found themselves among more than 100 tourists at Baisaran, the popular tourist spot in Pahalgam, Tuesday when terrorists opened fire, killing at least 26 people.
Jagdale and his friend were confirmed among the victims of the attack.
Speaking to ThePrint, his daughter, Asavari Jagdale, recounted that her father and his friend were singled out by the terrorists, forced to recite the kalma, cursed for supporting Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and then shot dead.
“Within a span of 30-odd minutes, our lives changed drastically. These are wounds that will never heal. I will ensure that not even a remote acquaintance of mine visits Kashmir for tourism. This trip has taken away everything we had and destroyed our lives. There’s no scope for closure,” 26-year-old Asavari said from Srinagar airport before taking her father’s body back to Pune.
She also pointed out that no security personnel were present the entire time they were at the spot, and that they only saw forces rushing toward the site as they were leaving.
Tuesday’s violence was the deadliest terrorist attack targeting civilians in Jammu and Kashmir since 2000, when over 30 pilgrims were killed at a base camp en route to the Amarnath cave.
Among those killed in the Pahalgam attack was Manish Ranjan, a section officer with the Hyderabad unit of the Intelligence Bureau (IB).
A family member told ThePrint that Ranjan was on LTC (or leave taken under the government’s Leave Travel Concession scheme) with his wife and two children in Kashmir who watched him get shot in the head.
The eldest of three sons, Ranjan was originally from Bihar’s Sasaram district, while the family had been residing in Purulia, West Bengal. He had joined government service around 2010 with the Central Excise department and had been posted in Hyderabad for the past two years. His parents, however, were unaware of the nature of his work there, the relative said.
Ranjan is survived by his elderly parents and two young children—a son and a daughter—both of whom were with him in Pahalgam on the day of the attack.
Anniversary celebrations, holidays gone wrong
Dinesh Miraniya, a 45-year-old businessman from Raipur in Chhattisgarh, had first travelled to Jammu to attend a religious function hosted by a relative. From there, he and his family—his wife and two children—set out for Kashmir.
“The couple had planned to celebrate their 21st wedding anniversary in Kashmir on 22 April. Little did they know what awaited them in Pahalgam,” Miraniya’s childhood friend Pradeep Kedia told reporters outside the family’s home in Raipur.
Since the attack, his wife Neha and his daughter Lakshita have been experiencing repeated episodes of unconsciousness.
Miraniya’s body was brought back home at midnight Wednesday. His son Shaurya, a 19-year-old student of Bachelor of Business Administration in Pune, performed the last rites Thursday.
Neeraj Udhwani, a resident of the United Arab Emirates, was in India to attend a wedding with plans for a quick holiday in Kashmir.
On Tuesday, he was killed in the attack in Pahalgam.
His family was devastated to find his name on the list of victims.
“He had come to India on 16 April to attend a wedding in Shimla and then went to meet a friend in Chandigarh, from where he went to Kashmir for a holiday to never return home,” his uncle Prakash Geryani, who lives in Jaipur, told ThePrint Thursday.
His body was brought home Wednesday.
Neeraj had married in February 2023 and was with his wife when he was shot dead by terrorists in Pahalgam.
“He had been in Dubai since he was 3 or 4 years old, as his father was running a business there. After his father passed away 10 years ago, Neeraj closed the business and stayed in Dubai, securing a job as a chartered accountant,” Geryani added.
Neeraj leaves behind his wife, his 65-year-old mother Jyoti, and an older brother who lives in Jaipur with their mother.
Tage Halyang (28), a Corporal in the Indian Air Force from Lower Tajang village in Arunachal Pradesh’s Lower Subansiri district, had recently been transferred from his posting in Srinagar to Dibrugarh, Assam. In fact, 20 April was his last day there. And what was meant to be a holiday before relocating turned tragic.
The sixth of 12 children of farmers Tage Tade and Tage Yagian, Halyang studied at the village school until primary level before moving to a boarding school in Faridabad, Haryana. He later completed his Bachelor of Arts from Don Bosco College in Arunachal Pradesh before joining the Indian Air Force in 2017. He was posted to Srinagar in 2022.
Halyang’s immediate elder brother also serves in the Indian Army and was earlier posted in Jammu.
“He was released from the Centre as he had been transferred. 20 April was his last date in Kashmir. He had called his wife to Kashmir for a holiday before shifting base. Unfortunately, he could never come back,” his maternal uncle Rubu Buker told ThePrint. Halyang got married in December 2024.
Halyang’s body reached his village at 7.30 am Thursday and is scheduled to be cremated Friday, Buker added.
(Edited by Zinnia Ray Chaudhuri)
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