INDORE: “There was the whisper of wind rustling through the trees, the echo of gunfire still ringing in my ears, and unbearable cold. I opened my eyes and the first thing I saw was my husband – slumped against a tree, motionless. Blood had soaked through his hair and was trailing down his shoulder. A worm was crawling across his skin. I wanted to scream, to run to him, to hold him – but I couldn’t move. The cold had numbed my limbs and frozen my voice…”
Jennifer Nathaniel closed her eyes and shuddered. Her husband, Sushil, had been put to rest. As if in slow motion, the horror of the terrorist attack in Pahalgam that killed Sushil and 25 others comes back to her in freeze-frame detail. Perhaps it’s her mind’s way of dealing with the shock.
Like the terror attack, Jennifer’s emotions and the horrific flashbacks are beyond her control. “Palestinia ke baare mein pata hai na (you know about Palestine, right)?” two gunmen asked Sushil on learning he was a Christian. Then, they shot him. Barely had she taken in the shock of seeing her husband’s body that two terrorists appeared, surveying the dead, she recalls.
One of them kicked me hard to see if I was still alive: Jennifer
I quickly shut my eyes and held my breath. One of them kicked me, hard, to see if I was still alive. I didn’t flinch. I couldn’t. I turned my head ever so slightly once they moved away and saw a young girl sprawled lifeless against a nearby tree. Just behind my husband was another man – also dead – propped against the trunk of a tree.”
Jennifer tried to move toward Sushil again, but couldn’t. “That’s when I realized I was covered with a sweater – his sweater. Even in the chaos, even after being shot, he had managed to throw it over me,” she said.
“I saw three people nearby – two in normal clothes and one dressed like a Kashmiri. They were taking selfies with the dead bodies,” she said.
“Soon after, the gunmen came back. They kicked me again to check if I was alive. I closed my eyes, held my breath, and lay completely still, pretending to be dead. Once they were convinced everyone was dead, they left. I don’t know when they shot my husband. They had shot everyone in the head,” Jennifer recalled.
She lay there, motionless, until the Army arrived. “I didn’t trust them at first – they were in similar uniforms, and I feared they might be part of the attackers and so I again pretended to be dead. Eventually, I raised my hand. One of them ran to me and sent out a wireless message that I was alive and needed help,” the Indorean said.
“I was not in my senses. I kept begging him to save my husband. I kept asking everyone, ‘What is Kalma?’ But no one answered. They helped me, but no one went to my husband.”
As she was brought down the mountain, she said that all she could see were dead bodies and pools of blood. “Even now, when I close my eyes, I see those bodies,” she said, with a shiver.
When they had started for Baisaran valley around 11am that day, Akansha stayed back as she was not feeling well. The driver suggested a nice place to leave her and Sushil dropped her there and he, Jennifer and their son Austen set off on ponies.
“It was such a beautiful day, I had gathered a lot of courage to sit on the pony, but I was scared because it was my first time. The path was very dangerous, but I still rode. We made it to the top. That’s when Sushil asked me if I wanted to try the ropeway. Without hesitation, I said yes. He was so surprised and happy – he knew how fearful I usually am. I bought the ropeway ticket, which cost Rs 350. He ran around excitedly, taking videos of me,” Jennifer said.
They were about to leave when he said he needed to go to the washroom. “I told him to go alone, but he insisted I come along. Austen went towards the ponies clicking pictures and waited for us at a distance. We went towards the washroom. There were at least 30 people around, washing mud off their shoes under a tap,” she recalled.
Just as he came out of the washroom, the couple heard a loud bang. At first, they thought the ropeway cable had snapped or a gear level had broken.
“But when we looked toward the gate, we saw someone had been shot. And then gunfire broke out – everywhere. The attackers were shooting indiscriminately. There was silence, punctuated by gunshots. Bodies started falling all around us. We hid behind the washroom and used a narrow passage to escape through the fence into the forest,” said the survivor.
“We all said to each other, ‘Run, we won’t survive if we stay.’ My husband was desperately trying to find a phone to call for help, but he didn’t have a postpaid phone. I had given both my phone and Austen’s to our daughter earlier, so we couldn’t reach him either. My husband was calling out for our son, asking if anyone had seen him. The crowd told everyone to scatter and run in different directions,” she said.
“Suddenly, my husband pushed me behind a tree, trying to protect me. The terrorists came straight at us and two of them pointed rifles at us. They told Sushil to recite the Kalma. He said, ‘I’m a Christian, I don’t know it.’ One of the attackers said, “Here, only the Kalma will be spoken. You know about Palestine right? (Yaha bas Kalma hi chalega. Palestinia ke baare mein pata hai na?) Then he fired… I fainted at the sound of the gunshot,” said Jennifer.
Austen was waiting at the gate but when the firing started, pony handlers took him down safely. He saw the first person being shot dead and ran for his life.
Later, after being reunited with Akansha, Jennifer asked the Armymen about Austen. “Just then, one of them got a call and he said, ‘Her husband has been shot.’ That’s when I lost control. I nearly fell out of the vehicle. My daughter ran to pull me back. She fell face-first while running and fractured her leg.”
There should have been better security, she said.
“This isn’t the first time something like this has happened. There should have been Army presence in such a vast area. There should have been proper security in Kashmir. These terrorists don’t deserve to be jailed – they deserve the harshest punishment. I saw small children being attacked. And those two young attackers? They were taking selfies with the bodies – posing and clicking photos amid all that bloodshed. Is this even human?”
