The 2019 Pulwama attack occurred on 14 February 2019, when a convoy of vehicles carrying Indian security personnel on the Jammu–Srinagar National Highway was attacked by a vehicle-borne suicide bomber at Lethapora in the Pulwama district of the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir.
The attack killed 40 Indian Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel as well as the perpetrator—Adil Ahmad Dar—who was a local Kashmiri youth from the Pulwama district. The responsibility for the attack was claimed by the Pakistan-based Islamist terrorist group, Jaish-e-Mohammed.
India blamed neighbouring Pakistan for the attack, while the latter condemned the attack and denied having any connections to it. The attack dealt a severe blow to India–Pakistan relations, consequently resulting in the 2019 India–Pakistan military standoff. Subsequently, Indian investigations identified 19 accused. By August 2021, the main accused along with six others had been killed, and seven had been arrested.
The Indian government ignored at least 11 intelligence inputs from multiple sources, including by the Indian intelligence agency Intelligence Bureau and Jammu and Kashmir Police, before the attack. Satya Pal Malik, who was the governor of the state at the time, later alleged in an interview with Karan Thapar that the Prime Minister Narendra Modi asked him to remain silent on security lapses by his administration. In April 2023, the Home Minister of India Amit Shah rejected the allegations and said that the government has nothing to hide. He questioned the credibility of Malik’s allegations and asked why he didn’t raise these issues when he was the Governor of Jammu and Kashmir. Shah asked why Malik raised these issues after leaving the government.
THE ATTACK
On 14 February 2019, a convoy of 78 vehicles transporting more than 2,500 Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel from Jammu to Srinagar was travelling on National Highway 44. The convoy had left Jammu around 03:30 IST and was carrying a large number of personnel due to the highway having been shut down for two days prior. The convoy was scheduled to reach its destination before sunset.
At Lethpora near Awantipora, around 15:15 IST, a bus carrying security personnel was rammed by a car carrying explosives. It caused a blast which killed 40 CRPF personnel of the 76th Battalion and injured many others. The injured were moved to the army base hospital in Srinagar.
Pakistan-based militant group Jaish-e-Mohammed claimed responsibility for the attack. They also released a video of the assailant Adil Ahmad Dar, 22, from Kakapora who had joined the group a year earlier. Dar’s family had last seen him in March 2018, when he left his house on a bicycle one day and never returned. Pakistan denied any involvement, though Jaish-e-Mohammed’s leader, Masood Azhar, is known to operate in the country.
It was the deadliest terror attack on India’s state security personnel in Kashmir since 1989.
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