As tensions ripple through Kashmir and the rest of India after the April 22 terrorist attack in Pahalgam, one local hero is calling for compassion and unity in the face of hate. Rayees Ahmad, a pony handler from the valley who risked his life to rescue victims, is urging fellow citizens not to let fear and communal division define the nation’s response.
Ahmad, 35, was at work when he received a garbled phone call about an attack near the Baisaran meadow, a remote and popular tourist spot. “Tourists are being fired upon,” was all he heard before the signal dropped. Without hesitation, he and six others ran toward the danger.
“When we arrived, there was chaos—people screaming, injured tourists crying out for help,” Ahmad recalls. “We didn’t think about our own safety. We just knew we had to help.”
The assault claimed 26 lives, mostly Hindu visitors, and was one of the deadliest attacks in the region in years. Among the victims was 28-year-old Syed Adil Hussain Shah, a fellow pony guide who reportedly tried to wrestle a gun away from one of the assailants.
While the attackers had fled by the time Ahmad and his team reached the site, their swift action helped redirect around 100 tourists away from the ambush. With no medical teams in sight and the area inaccessible to vehicles, they used ponies to transport the injured across rugged terrain, cleaned wounds with whatever supplies they had, and offered water and comfort.
“The horror of that day will stay with us forever,” Ahmad says. “But what hurts even more is the hate we are now seeing.”
In the days following the attack, there has been a spike in Islamophobic incidents across India, including a violent assault on Kashmiri students at a college in Punjab. Videos circulating online show attackers wielding sharp weapons, and students visibly injured and terrified. Authorities have vowed to investigate, and Kashmir’s leadership has reached out to state governments urging protection for their citizens.
Ahmad, meanwhile, rejects the sectarian narrative emerging in some quarters. “That day, we didn’t see anyone’s religion. We only saw human beings,” he says. “Dividing ourselves will only take our country backwards.”
The pony handlers who saved lives are now struggling to make their own ends meet. With tourism grinding to a halt, Ahmad says their income has disappeared. “We used to earn around Rs 4,000 a day. Now, it’s barely Rs 10. We can’t survive like this.”
Despite the fear, Ahmad pleads with tourists not to abandon Kashmir. “If they stop coming, the terrorists win. But if they return, it means the terrorists failed,” he says. “We are ready to give our lives to protect them.”
He also denounces the attackers in the strongest terms. “There is no forgiveness for this in Islam,” he says. “Killing innocent people is the murder of humanity.”
Ahmad’s message is simple but profound: let tragedy bind us together, not tear us apart. “In that moment of terror, we weren’t Hindu or Muslim. We were just people helping people.”
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