NEW DELHI: The two Kashmiri locals – in jail in the Pahalgam attack case for allegedly harbouring the three Pakistani terrorists a night before the incident – could have easily prevented the mayhem of April 22, 2025, and saved 26 civilians from being brutally gunned down in front of their families.Around 12.30 pm on the fateful day, hours before the ghastly event unfolded, Parvaiz Ahmad and Bashir Ahmad Jothad had spotted the three terrorists – later identified as Faisal Jatt alias Suleman Shah, Habeeb Tahir alias Jibran and Hamza Afghani – hiding behind a fence at Baisaran. Considering that the attackers had visited the homes of Bashir and Parvaiz only the evening before – during which they talked in an accented Urdu-Punjabi mix – carrying sophisticated weapons and spoke of Ali Bhai (an alias used by prime accused Sajid Jatt, a top Lashker-e-Taiba/The Resistance Front commander, belonging to Pakistan’s Kasur area), sources said it was amply clear to the duo that a terror attack in the area was imminent.

.

Duo took 3,000 from terrorists, sheltered them, chose silence

The duo – who had accepted Rs 3,000 from the terrorists in return for harbouring and facilitating them – chose to embrace silence, when they could have easily placed a call to police or alerted local tourist operators’ association about spotting of terrorists in the area. They kept mum even after the terrorists left their house at around 10.30 pm on April 21, 2025, after spending five hours and eating meals, investigation has revealed. While leaving, the terrorists had packed some food and borrowed a cooking vessel, blankets and a tarpaulin sheet.Though Bashir and Parvaiz had spotted the terrorists near the Baisaran fence, they simply moved away to a distant spot with their ponies, waiting for their tourist customers to return. Between 1 pm and 1.30 pm, Bashir and Parvaiz ferried the tourists back to Pahalgam on their ponies. Hours later, when they eventually heard of the blood-curdling murders in Baisaran by the very same terrorists they had sheltered, they quietly and promptly abandoned their dhoks (temporary mountain hut) and went into hiding.NIA ultimately caught up with the duo and arrested them on June 22, 2025. The two were chargesheeted in Dec 2025 along with Sajid Jatt, the three Pakistani attackers (deceased) and LeT/TRF as an entity.Sources in the agencies on Tuesday told TOI that the Pakistan link to the Pahalgam terror conspiracy was further confirmed by Facebook which traced a misleading post circulated in India, claiming ‘Jibran was our man’, to Pakistani phone numbers in Bahawalpur and Rawalpindi.