NIA team at Pahalgam victim’s house, officers record statements of family members
Telegraph | 28 April 2025
A team of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Sunday recorded the statement of the family members of Bitan Adhikary, one of the three Calcuttans to have been killed in the Pahalgam terror attack last week.
The three-member team, comprising a woman officer, visited Adhikary’s Baishnabghata Lane home to meet his wife, Sohini and son, Hridaan, who were witnesses to the massacre.
The NIA team stayed there for over five hours to make detailed queries about what they heard and saw at the time of the terror attack.
Sources in the central agency said the statement of the family members was recorded on what transpired on April 22, when gunmen launched a brutal attack on tourists at the picturesque Baisaran Valley.
Starting from the details of the terrorists, their dialect, language, how they looked, or if there was anything unusual about them, the team asked for all the details.
An NIA team visited the home of another victim — Sameer Guha — on Saturday to speak to his wife and daughter. It is likely to visit the house of the third victim — Manish Ranjan Kumar, in Purulia’s Jhalda.
NIA sources said the investigators had collected electronic data from several reel makers and pony riders in Pahalgam who were also witnesses to the case. They have captured the incident in bits and pieces.
“The officers are trying to verify and identify these people in the videos and footage obtained by matching them with the statement of the survivors who have seen the terrorists from a proximity,” a source said.
Since the handover of the probe of the terror attack to the NIA, the central agency has sent multiple teams to visit the attack survivors across the country to record their statements. The survivors could be potential witnesses in the case, sources said.
On Sunday, sources said, Sohini narrated the incident in detail while her statement was recorded. NIA officials also informally spoke to the couple’s three-and-a-half-year-old son Hridaan on what he could remember about the incident.
Rough sketches of the suspects were prepared based on the statement of the mother and son, the sources said.