Trousers of 20 victims pulled down, unzipped
NEW DELHI: The trousers of around 20 victims of the dastardly Pahalgam attack – all males – were found unzipped or pulled down by the team of officials that carried out the first examination of the 26 lifeless, bullet-riddled bodies, in what is being seen as a confirmation that terrorists had established the faith of the tourists before killing them.
A team comprising officers of the Army, J&K police and J&K administration found to their horror that clothing from the lower body of 20 of the 26 victims had been forcibly dislodged, with their pant zippers undone, pants pulled down, exposing their underwear or private parts. The victims’ kin were possibly too much in shock to have noticed the state of the clothing on the bodies; even the staff retrieved the bodies as they were, simply covering them with a shroud.
It was only the team of officers tasked with a thorough examination of the bodies – possibly for the purpose of recording finer details to be included in the FIR – that noticed the tell-tale signs of how the terrorists had subjected the male victims to the medievalesque, barbaric faith-determination test, by having their lower garments undone, just to establish their faith.
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Eyewitness accounts have confirmed that the terrorists had checked for faith of each of the victims by asking for their identity proof like Aadhaar card or driving licence, etc, ordering them to recite the kalma (Muslim prayer verse) and asking them to remove their lower clothing so that they could check for circumcision.
Once their Hindu identities were established through these 3 ‘tests’, the terrorists shot the victims at close range. Twenty-five of the 26 people killed in Tuesday’s attack were Hindus, all of them males.
Investigation into the massacre, meanwhile, gathered steam, with sources saying nearly 70 overground workers (OGWs) and known terror sympathisers from various places like Tral, Pulwama, Anantnag and Kulgam are being questioned by a joint team of J&K police, Intelligence Bureau and RAW officials. “Initially, the probe team rounded up 1,500 OGWs to examine their possible role. These have been narrowed down to 70 OGWs strongly suspected to have helped Pahalgam attack team with logistics. We hope to narrow the search further and get to the real culprits soon,” a J&K administration officer said.
