By N. C. Bipindra

(ADDS: Media briefing by India at 10:30 a.m. on May 7, 2025, and additional background.)

New Delhi: India punishes Pakistan again. This time, India’s army and air force carried out coordinated precision strikes on nine terror camp locations inside Pakistan and Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir, targeting strongholds of Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) and Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT). No civilian casualties were reported in the measured air and land strikes, India said at a media briefing later in the day.

The ‘Operation Sindoor‘ military attacks by India, reminiscent of the February 2019 Balakot operations, came 15 days after Pakistan-trained terrorists killed 26 Indian civilians at Pahalgam in Jammu and Kashmir on Apr. 22, 2025.

India’s army commandos and air force fighter jets hit the terror camps just after midnight on May 7, 2025. This time, it was India that announced to the world through a media statement that it had struck terror camps inside Pakistan.

The Operation Sindoor strikes included Markaz Subhan Allah at Pakistani Punjab‘s Bahawalpur, the headquarters of JeM, about 100 kilometers from the International Border between India and Pakistan. India used its combat aircraft to hit Markaz Subhan Allah.

The significance of the Indian military operation’s name was not lost on anyone. Sindoor is the red vermilion that Indian women apply on their foreheads to mark their married status.

The riveting image of the Pahalgam attack was of Himanshi Narwal, the wife of Lieutenant Vinay Narwal. Himanshi lost her ‘Sindoor’ within days of her marriage, while on a honeymoon in Kashmir. Vinay Narwal was singled out and killed by the terrorists.

In the 2019 Balakot strike, Pakistan had taken the march over India on its media narrative, with India falling far behind in countering those narratives. This time, it was India that called the Pakistani bluff.

“A little while ago, the Indian armed forces launched ‘OPERATION SINDOOR,’ hitting terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir from where terrorist attacks against India have been planned and directed,” the statement said.

“Our actions have been focused, measured, and non-escalatory in nature. No Pakistani military facilities have been targeted.” Through this action, India demonstrated to the world its “considerable restraint” in selecting targets and the method of execution.

The statement said these steps come in the wake of the barbaric Pahalgam terrorist attack in which 25 Indians and one Nepali citizen were murdered. “We are living up to the commitment that those responsible for this (Pahalgam) attack will be held accountable.”

After the Pahalgam terror strike, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi had vowed that India would identify, track, and punish the planners and perpetrators of the terror strike on Indian and Nepali civilians. India had taken a series of diplomatic punitive actions, including the suspension of the long-standing Indus Waters Treaty.

The Indian government, headed by Modi, had patiently held several planning meetings — political, diplomatic, and military — over the last 10 days in preparation for Operation Sindoor, apart from the civil defence alerts, which happened for the first time after the 1971 Bangladesh liberation war.

The Indian leadership’s statements through those 10 days of preparation were calibrated, patient, and assuring to the people of India, who were seething with anger at Pakistan and were calling for “revenge.”

Simultaneously, India was building political capital internationally through diplomatic engagements with State and government leaders globally, foreign ministers and defence ministers, and ambassadors of several nations.

At 10:30 a.m. on May 7, 2025, the Indian Ministry of Defence (MoD) and the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) conducted a joint press briefing in New Delhi on Operation Sindoor.

India’s Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri told the media that the Pahalgam terror strikes were carried out to create “communal discord” in India between two communities, as the terrorists from the so-called Resistance Force had singled out the Hindus to kill mercilessly.

Misri said Pakistani and Pakistan-trained terrorists had murdered 26 people, the largest casualty in any terror attack post the 2008 Mumbai terror strikes. He said the terrorists had asked the survivors of the terror attack to carry the message to the Indian prime minister.

India had given details about the Resistance Force to the United Nations sanctions committee and the fig leaf of deniability of Pakistan. But the social media posts of the group after the Pahalgam attack had given out their heinous complicity.

Probably with terror victims like Himanshi Narwal on its mind, the Indian government said Operation Sindoor was to “deliver justice” to the Pahalgam terror attack victims and their grieving families.

At the media briefing, Colonel Sophia Qureshi and Wing Commander Voymika Singh also gave video footage of their military strikes under Operation Sindoor and the names of the locations of the terror training camps used as indoctrination centres, training infrastructure, and launch pads.

(This is developing news. The report shall be updated.)

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