Who Was Suleman Shah, The Mastermind Of The Pahalgam Attack?

The mastermind of the Pahalgam attack, Suleman Shah alias Asif, was a top commander of Lashkar-e-Taiba and a former commando of the Pakistan Army.

Security Forces killed three terrorists on July 28 in Jammu and Kashmir. All three terrorists were involved in the Pahalgam attack. One of them was Suleman Shah. He was the mastermind of the Pahalgam attack, who plotted and executed the terrorist attack in the Baisaran Valley in Pahalgam, Jammu and Kashmir, on 22 April 2025.

He was an expert in unconventional warfare and covert operations. He left the Pakistan Army and joined Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) under the leadership of Hafiz Saeed. He infiltrated into India by crossing the Line of Control (LoC) in 2022 and started carrying out terrorist activities in South Kashmir.

Suleman was sent across the border by Lashkar-e-Taiba to strengthen terrorist activities in Kashmir and recruit new youth. He was an A-category terrorist, on whom the Jammu and Kashmir Police had placed a bounty of Rs 20 lakh.

He infiltrated India in 2022, joined Lashkar-e-Taiba, and was involved in several terror attacks, including the Sonamarg tunnel attack and attacks in Ganderbal and Baramulla.

Suleman was also one of the masterminds of the terror attack in Pahalgam's Baisaran Valley on 22 April 2025. The responsibility for the attack was initially claimed by Lashkar-e-Taiba's proxy organization, The Resistance Front (TRF), but was later denied when the situation worsened.

Suleman was also involved in the Sonamarg tunnel attack (2024), in which six laborers and a doctor were killed, and the attack on security forces in Baramulla, in which four soldiers were martyred. Apart from this, he also had a role in the attack on an army truck in Poonch in April 2023, in which five soldiers were martyred.

Finally, Suleman was killed along with two terrorists in a joint operation of security forces under Operation Mahadev in the forests of Dachigam in Srinagar on 28 July.

According to the information, after the encounter, 17 rifle grenades, an M4 carbine, two AK-47 rifles, and other weapons were recovered from the terrorists' hideout. The cartridges recovered from these weapons were matched with the cartridges of the Pahalgam attack, which confirmed that these were the same terrorists who had shed the blood of innocent, unarmed people.

The killing of Suleman Shah is being considered a major setback for Lashkar-e-Taiba in Jammu and Kashmir.