Why Was There No Security Where Tourists Gathered? Questions Wife Of a Victim

Bengaluru: Recalling the scenes at Baisaran Valley in Pahalgam in Jammu and Kashmir where militants gunned down 28 tourists, a visitor to the Valley, Pallavi, wife of Manjunath Rao, a victim in the firing incident, questioned the Union Government “Why was there no security at the place which looks like a trap?”

Manjunath (47) with his wife Pallavi and son Abhijit visited Jammu and Kashmir on April 19 and on Tuesday at around 2.30 pm he lost his life to a terror attack on tourists. Manjunath, a businessman and a resident of Vijaynagar in Shivamogga city.

She, in a talk with a Kannada news channel on her arrival from Jammu and Kashmir on Thursday, stated “There was adequate security en route to Baisaran Valley but none at the place where tourists congregate?”

“No network coverage at the place nor trapped tourists’ could make efforts to run away or jump to safety (in case of militant attack), " she noted. “We believed the Union Government initiated adequate security and decided to visit Kashmir, considered a heaven for tourists, since there were no untoward incidents in recent years,” she said and recounted the scenes at the Valley when militants pumped bullets at tourists’ congregated location.

Pallavi said they had spent about an hour at the Valley and bullets were fired at the tourists congregation from forest areas nearby and recalled her husband Manjunath fell to a “single” bullet fired at him. His death was instantly and instantly his blood was full of blood.

She pointed to her husband’s blood stains on her bag and stated “She preserved her clothes full of my husband’s blood stains. I will never wash them.”

“I saw two terrorists and one of them at close angles. I spoke to one of them asking him to gun down them as well. I saw no fear in them,” Pallavi recounted her encounter with the terrorists.

She recalled that a militant checked an injured person and came to know where he was alive and shot him dead at point blank range and stated “I came across as many as 25 dead persons.”

Her son Abhijit said he did not fear the terrorists but was livid over the killing of his father. “I shouted kutte (dog) at him and to kill him and his mother but the terrorist replied Wait, Wait.. and said Go ask Modi (Prime Minister Narendra Modi),” he added.