Pahalgam terrorists killed during Operation Sindoor debate in Parliament: Coincidence?

After several days of deadlock across both Houses, with the Opposition’s several demands and questions from across the nation, the government finally agreed to discuss the Pahalgam terror attack and Operation Sindoor in Parliament.

Yet, on the morrow, as Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra has just pointed out in her speech, many of the most critical — and most common — questions that the country wanted answers to... remain unanswered.

And on the sidelines, there was finally the killing of the alleged terrorists of Pahalgam — a coincidence, or a top-secret plan long set into motion?

The issue of the killing of 26 people in the terrorist attack in Pahalgam in Jammu and Kashmir on 22 April 2025, the subsequent Operation Sindoor carried out by India in retaliation against terrorist bases identified in Pakistan, and the Indian delegations sent to dozens of countries worldwide has finally come to be debated in both Houses of Parliament — after months of insistence by the Opposition.

The debate in the Lok Sabha began on 28 July, with a statement by defence minister Rajnath Singh. He gave a long speech, but the questions raised about the Pahalgam terror attack and Operation Sindoor still remain unanswered.

The first and foremost question the Opposition — and surely the nation — wanted to raise was why the terrorists who carried out this barbaric terrorist attack had not yet been found and arrested. But was it a mere coincidence or a planned exercise that ensured that just half an hour before the discussion was to begin in the Lok Sabha, news came from Jammu and Kashmir that the alleged terrorists who carried out the Pahalgam attack had been killed?

On 29 July, the day after the debate in the Lok Sabha, union home minister Amit Shah officially announced that the three terrorists who carried out the Pahalgam attack have been killed. He also explained the complete 'chronology' — and underscored that the slain terrorists were the ones who carried out the Pahalgam attack, how they were identified.

However, the question still remained unanswered after his speech likewise: how did these terrorists fall victims to the bullets of our braves just as soon as the discussion started in Parliament?

It is important to mention here that as soon as the time for the discussion in Parliament was decided, Congress leader Jairam Ramesh had put some questions to the government — including one on whether the terrorists who were suspected to be involved in the Pahalgam attack were also involved in the terrorist attacks in Poonch in December 2023 and Gagangir and Gulmarg in October 2024. Should the answer be in the affirmative, the Opposition leader wondered, how did these terrorists remain at large for so many days and yet come to be conveniently discovered by the security forces mere minutes before the discussion started in Parliament?

On 14 July 2025, the lieutenant governor of Jammu and Kashmir, Manoj Sinha, publicly admitted that the Pahalgam attack was definitely a failure of the security system. Yet, over two days, the government did not answer another key question that all citizens have been asking: who was responsible for this failure of intelligence and what action has been taken against them — or indeed, more proactively, to prevent a recurrence?

These aren't all, either. There are innumerable questions about Operation Sindoor that neither the defence minister nor the home minister have attempted to answer at all, far less ‘satisfactorily’.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, of course, has been silent — understandable, since he was not even in the House. Indeed, he had not found it appropriate to attend the all-party meeting held after the Pahalgam terror attack either, though one was finally convened after much insistence from the Opposition parties to be taken into confidence and as a show of solidarity for the nation and on a global stage.

It may also be pertinent to mention here that after the all-party meeting, it was clearly revealed that the Pahalgam attack was the result of a huge security lapse. It was officially acknowledged that our intelligence agencies and security agencies had failed to anticipate as well as stop the attack until the attackers themselves broke off. All the resistance they faced was from intrepid locals.

But as for governance, no accountability nor responsibility were fixed at the time; none has been pinned on anyone even now; and there is no further discussion of it in Parliament but for the questions the Opposition must continue to amplify — seemingly, in vain.

There were many more questions about Operation Sindoor that the nation is waiting for the answers to. This is merely a selection of the foremost:

• What was the main objective of Operation Sindoor? Has that objective been fulfilled? Or is the Operation yet to be concluded?

• What has India achieved in the interim, during this operation?

• Did India suffer any losses in this operation? How significant were they and indeed, what were they? (After all, senior Army personnel have spoken to the media of aircraft lost, a Rafale or so perhaps, yet there is no official statement. Why the secrecy still?)

• How has the rest of the world reacted to India’s overtures following this operation? What did they say to our delegates about the Pahalgam terror attack and Pakistan’s complicity in cross-border terrorism in the region?

None of these questions common amongst the citizenry have been answered by the defence minister — or, indeed, anyone else from the government.

And then there are the questions elicited by those that might be considered representatives of the government themselves.

Many a citizen recalls the startling — surely important? — revelations of 30 May 2025, when the chief of our defence staff General Anil Chauhan remarked on the strategic errors made in the first two days of Operation Sindoor. He made these revelations in Singapore, however — and not in India. Why? (Add that to our growing pile of questions; 'tis but a featherweight.)

On 29 June 2025, Group Captain Shiv Kumar, a defence officer posted at the Indian Embassy in Jakarta, said that certain political decisions during Operation Sindoor hampered its execution. He also hinted at the possible loss of Indian fighter jets. Does defence minister Rajnath Singh’s apparent rebuke to the Opposition that "in an examination, it is not seen whether the pen or pencil have broken or fallen" suffice as a response? That’s perhaps too small a question to answer.

There was another important matter that the vice-chief of the Army staff, Lt Gen. Rahul R. Singh, mentioned earlier this month. He said that during Operation Sindoor, India tussled with China too, deploying both hardware and software. This was a completely new twist in the tale, surely meriting some curious questions — but there remains only silence shrouding it, officially at least.

However, the defence minister and the government told Parliament that during Operation Sindoor, the Pakistani DGMO called and said, ‘Maharaj, mercy! Pray cease now!’ [or words to that effect] — and Operation Sindoor was ‘paused’. Now, in addition to the many claims of one POTUS Donald Trump that his trade threats achieved this end (which perhaps this statement of the government responds to), there is also the simple question, surely, of why India stopped its pursuit of vengeance / deterrence at Pakistan’s ask at all — after all, we had stated clearly, had we not, that our war was not on our neighbouring nation but on terrorists hiding within it?

This was the very question that constituted Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi’s intervention: Why stop at the Pakistani DGMO’s behest, since it was not Pakistan we were warring with? The defence minister did not deign to answer.

During the discussion, the external affairs minister also gave a long speech. Kiren Rijiju trotted out many a tally of many things; yet not once did he address the rather large number of instances of the POTUS claiming credit for the ceasefire between India and Pakistan.

And surely, no citizen of India needs a reminder that the ceasefire in Operation Sindoor was not announced first time by the Government of India or the Indian Army, nor even by Pakistan — it was announced by Donald Trump.

Home minister Amit Shah, who was present in the Lok Sabha, appeared livid that the Opposition sought an explanation from external affairs minister S. Jaishankar regarding the POTUS’ speeches. He alleged that the Opposition seems to trust the US more than India’s own foreign minister. Yet, he too had no answer, seemingly, to the peculiar coincidence that even as he stood berating the Opposition in India’s Parliament, Donald Trumo was saying yet again, for the 28th time, that he had engineered the ceasefire between India and Pakistan — by threatening to choke off trade for both.

What‘s more, the foreign minister — who was only recently in the US — apparently could not even tell whose five fighter planes it was that Trump claimed had been shot down during Operation Sindoor, India's or Pakistan's.

The external affairs minister also had no answer as to what the POTUS’ attitude to India might actually be, given the US was hosting Pakistani army chief Asif Munir even as an all-party delegation from India was visiting different nations at the personal request of the Prime Minister, telling our story and presumably wresting sympathy towards us and away from Pakistan. Why was he unable to speak of the success of our international outreach mission on Operation Sindoor? That remains but another small question going begging.

There is, too, this other small matter that, ‘officially’, Operation Sindoor has not ended; it is ongoing — which is why it is not appropriate to give out more information about it. So, even if this wards off further questions, does it also disallow revealing what exactly India may have achieved thus far? Surely a ceasefire must have been agreed only after we achieved some signal, if interim, objectives? (Surely, it was not US trade that was secured, else surely the government must have said so — with trade deals not being any part of Operation Sindoor, of course?)

Or, indeed, if secrecy is so much of an imperative, why even agree to a discussion?

We can hardly avoid mention here of tomorrow, 30 July, being the 26th anniversary of the end of the Kargil War. After the end of the last Indo–Pak war in 1999, the then-Vajpayee government formed a four-member committee under the chairmanship of K. Subrahmanyam to review that operation. The committee submitted its report to the government, which was discussed in Parliament. (That K. Subrahmanyam’s son is the current external affairs minister, S. Jaishankar, incidentally.)

This elicits one last question, then: Has the government formed (or have plans to form) any such committee on Operation Sindoor? If yes, who are in it, and when is its report likely to be received?

Yes, this has been a truly exhausting list of questions, though less than exhaustive.

Now, doubtless, there are reasons of national security — or the fact that Operation Sindoor is still not declared officially concluded — that prevents the answers from being made public. Why else, after all, might the treasury benches evidence thinning attendance just before Gandhi Vadra stood up to speak? 

Meanwhile, there are some 22 children orphaned in Poonch alone, beyond the Pahalgam attack itself — children now being sponsored by LoP Rahul Gandhi — who would doubtless like some answers as to what happened and why it was allowed to happened to their parents too. Perhaps they may expect by the time they are all grown up.