{
 "no": 53,
 "id": "case-53",
 "sk": 20250422,
 "year": 2025,
 "date": "22 Apr 2025",
 "cat": "National security",
 "sev": "red",
 "title": "Pahalgam. 26 dead, a lapse admitted, nobody moved",
 "stamp": "Responsibility taken, no resignation",
 "human": {
  "v": "<b>26</b> killed, <b>25</b> Indians and one Nepali citizen, among them a local pony operator shot while trying to stop the gunmen; the injured count is reported inconsistently",
  "est": false
 },
 "cost": {
  "v": "Never costed publicly. The attack broke a tourism-led recovery in the valley; no compensation figure has been published",
  "est": true
 },
 "what": "On the afternoon of 22 April 2025, gunmen attacked tourists at Baisaran meadow, a walk-in-only site about five kilometres from Pahalgam. Two attackers who had mingled with the crowd herded people towards two more armed men, who segregated victims by religion before shooting them. Twenty-six people were killed.",
 "dodge": "At an all-party meeting two days later, Home Ministry and IB officials briefed leaders on where the lapses had occurred, and said tourists had gone to Baisaran without police permission. Reporting a year on notes such permission had not historically been sought, and that the meadow carried no deployment at all. On 14 July 2025 the Lieutenant Governor said he took full responsibility for what was 'undoubtedly a security failure', and remained in office. The government has never published what the lapses were, what was fixed, or who was answerable. The only public documents are the NIA chargesheets, which address the terror conspiracy, not the security failure.",
 "ministers": [
  {
   "n": "Ministry of Home Affairs",
   "r": "Security of J&K; lapses briefed to parties, never published"
  },
  {
   "n": "Manoj Sinha",
   "r": "Lieutenant Governor, J&K; accepted full responsibility, did not resign"
  }
 ],
 "pos": "The government's position is that this was a Pakistan-sponsored attack designed to create a communal divide and wreck Kashmir's tourism recovery, that it briefed all parties on the lapses within 48 hours, that the route had been opened by tour operators in April without permission on terrain reachable only after a two-hour walk, and that it delivered accountability through Operation Sindoor on 7 May 2025, the killing of the three attackers in July, and NIA chargesheets naming the Lashkar-e-Taiba leadership.",
 "alleg": "A report that a CRPF company assigned to Baisaran was redeployed shortly before the attack is attributed to unnamed sources and remains <em>unverified</em>.",
 "alt": "A published inquiry naming the decision that left a known tourist site unguarded, and a convention under which accepting full responsibility for 26 deaths carries a consequence.",
 "sources": [
  {
   "label": "Lapses briefed to all-party meeting",
   "url": "https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/pahalgam-terror-attack-tourists-taken-to-meadow-without-police-permission-government-informs-all-party-meeting/article69488066.ece",
   "tier": 2,
   "archiveUrl": "http://web.archive.org/web/20250722060251/https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/pahalgam-terror-attack-tourists-taken-to-meadow-without-police-permission-government-informs-all-party-meeting/article69488066.ece"
  },
  {
   "label": "LG: 'undoubtedly a security failure'",
   "url": "https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/defence/i-take-full-responsibility-jk-lg-manoj-sinha-calls-pahalgam-attack-a-security-failure/articleshow/122435616.cms",
   "tier": 2,
   "archiveUrl": "http://web.archive.org/web/20250811103430/https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/defence/i-take-full-responsibility-jk-lg-manoj-sinha-calls-pahalgam-attack-a-security-failure/articleshow/122435616.cms"
  },
  {
   "label": "A year on, lapses still unspecified",
   "url": "https://m.thewire.in/article/security/a-year-after-pahalgam-modi-govt-yet-to-clarify-lapses-that-led-to-attack",
   "tier": 2,
   "archiveUrl": "http://web.archive.org/web/20260511210236/https://m.thewire.in/article/security/a-year-after-pahalgam-modi-govt-yet-to-clarify-lapses-that-led-to-attack"
  }
 ],
 "estimates": {
  "deaths": 26
 },
 "caseUrl": "https://whoisresponsible.xyz/case/case-53/"
}