New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi personally codenamed the latest retaliatory military action in Pakistan and Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK) as “Operation Sindoor”, keeping in mind the widows of the April 22 Pahalgam terror attack.
Top government sources told one media house that the Prime Minister was clear-eyed about the human cost of the terror attack. The operation’s name — Sindoor, the vermillion worn by married Hindu women — was a deliberate invocation of grief, memory, and resolve. Prime Minister emphasised that the recent terror attack had deliberately targeted Indian men, leaving behind widowed women and broken families. He also told officials that the response to the terror attack has to show India won’t let this go.
The operation itself was a rare display of tri-service coordination. The Indian Army, Navy, and Air Force jointly executed a multi-domain assault, targeting nine locations across Pakistan and POK. According to officials, the strikes, launched through a combination of land and sea-based platforms, focused on terror launchpads and related infrastructure.
The Indian Air Force struck nine terror hideouts of banned groups Jaish-e-Mohammed, Lashkar-e-Taiba, and Hizbul Mujahideen—four deep inside Pakistan and five in Pakistan-Occupied-Kashmir (PoK). Targets included Jaish’s Markaz Subhan Allah in Bahawalpur, Sarjal camp in Tehra Kalan, Markaz Abbas in Kotli, and the Syedna Bilal camp in Muzaffarabad.
Lashkar’s strongholds — Markaz Taiba in Murdike, Markaz Ahle Hadith in Barnala, and Shwawai Nalla camp in Muzaffarabad — were also hit. Hizbul Mujahideen’s facilities at Makaz Raheel Shahid in Kotli and Mehmoona Joya in Sialkot were among those targeted. The strikes, carried out with surgical precision, mark one of the most significant cross-border counter-terror operations since Balakot.The “targetted and precise” strikes were carried out two weeks after the massacre of 26 civilians by terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pahalgam.