(UNI SPECIAL)Col Guru Saday Batabyal (Retd)New Delhi, April 20 -- On the morning of April 22, 2025, Baisaran Valley-a rolling meadow above Pahalgam, marketed as Kashmir's "Mini Switzerland" was meant to be a refuge. Tourists arrived to escape the heat and the press of everyday life: families seeking a day in the alpine air, newlyweds framing the first images of a shared future. Instead, the calm was torn apart by bursts of automatic gunfire.
When the shooting stopped, 26 civilians lay dead-most of them Hindu tourists singled out after their religious identity was verified, along with a local Muslim pony operator who was killed while trying to intervene. The photograph of a young bride kneeling beside her slain husband, a naval officer, has...