New Delhi: Pahalgam, a quaint town in Jammu and Kashmir’s Anantnag district with trails running northeast to Amarnath Cave Temple, a Hindu shrine and site of the annual Amarnath Yatra pilgrimage, was rocked on April 22, 2025, by a deadly terrorist attack which claimed the lives of 26 people. The terror attack, which was one of the deadliest in the Valley since the Pulwama strike in 2019, has shocked not just India but also the rest of the world, with growing voices demanding justice for the victims. The attack was perpetrated by the Resistance Front (TRF), an offshoot of the Lashkar-e-Taiba.
Since then, survivors’ accounts of how the terrorists attacked and carried out the bloodbath, turning the “heaven on earth” into a hellish nightmare have send a chill down the spine of those who are reading the tales of horror. As per reports, terrorists asked the victims their religion before opening fire. Amid such a scenario, a tourist from Assam has shared how he survived the terror attack despite coming face to face with a terrorist. While speaking to India Today, he recalled the terrible ordeal and said he started reciting Kalma loudly when a terrorist approached him.
How a Assam professor survived by reciting the Kalma
Professor Debashish Bhattacharjee, who heads the Assam University’s Bengali department in Silchar town, was planning to visit Kashmir for years with his wife Madhumita Das Bhattacharjee and their son. But just 24 hours after reaching Srinagar, their dream destination before a place of violence and chaos.
Debashish heard a gunshot when he was clicking photographs. There was a shawl vendor nearby who initially thought that it was not an unusual sound as forest guards often scare off monkeys pestering the tourists. However, the real situation soon unfolded as the terrorists stormed the famous tourist spot in Kashmir. As the terrorists opened rampant firing, the Bhattacharjee family began to seen bodies falling around them. They hid behind a tree, when a man running towards them and freezing in fear inches from Debashish was shot by another man from behind.
At that point, the Debashish saw some people chanting ‘La ilaha illallah’ as the gunman checked them out. When a gunman pressed the barrel on his head, he began to mutter the line. When the terrorist asked him what he was doing, Debashish began to repeat ‘La ilaha illallah’ more loudly. In his own words, “For some reason, he turned and left.” The phrase is a fundamental one in Islam and it means “There is no deity worthy of worship except Allah, and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.” When he was reciting the phrase, he heard a terrorist asking someone if they were taking ‘Ram Naam’.
The Bhattacharjees trekked uphill along with a few other tourists’, and escaped to safety a couple of hours later. For 30 more minutes, they heard more gunshots as blood of innocents painted the Valley a nightmarish red. They were helped by a woman in a village on the way who guided and helped them by contacting some transporters to take them to Srinagar. The Assam government has arranged for the return of the Bhattacharjee family, with Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma himself overseeing the process.
