New Delhi: The GoPro camera used by the terrorists during the Pahalgam terror attack of April 2025 was manufactured in the US and then shipped to a distributor in China.
Investigators are now actively tracing how the high-tech gadget made its way to the prescribed terrorist outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), senior officials said on Sunday, as reported by The Tribune.
The camera was recovered from the terrorists, who were neutralised in an encounter in Dachigam forests in July 2025. It opened a critical new line of inquiry into the external logistics network supporting terror outfits in Jammu and Kashmir.
Pakistan-based terror outfits have increasingly being using cameras to record their activities in Jammu and Kashmir for propaganda and psychological warfare.
Unearthing this specific supply chain could expose critical vulnerabilities or complicity in the underground networks that funnel funds, hardware and tactical gear across borders to anti-India outfits, investigators believe.
The National Investigation Agency (NIA) officially reached out to the US manufacturer GoPro Inc to ascertain where the device had been sold. The US-based firm, in a formal response, reported that the specific device was originally shipped to an authorised commercial distributor in China, according to officials.
The probe has now shifted focus toward tracking how the camera from the Chinese distributor landed in the hands of LeT handlers, with a likely possibility that these cameras could have been purchased by the Pakistan Army and later supplied to terror groups.
As India does not have a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty with China, such cases are taken up through diplomatic channels.
“The charge sheet establishes the immediate operational details of the Baisaran attack, but the wider investigation remains wide open,” an official has been quoted as saying.
“We are actively investigating the procurement channels to ascertain how a commercial device tracking back to China was diverted to a banned terrorist organisation operating in Jammu and Kashmir,” the official said.
Twenty-six innocents, most of them tourists, were gunned down by terrorists in Baisaran meadows in Pahalgam on April 22, 2025, prompting the government to launch Operation Sindoor on May 7 in which terror infrastructure outfits based in Pakistan-controlled based on Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir (PoJK) were targeted, including the main camps of the LeT and Jaish-e-Mohammed.
The Chinese-link does not end with the GoPro. At least two AK-47 rifles recovered from the attack site in Baisaran, as well as one from Dachigam forests on the outskirts of Srinagar, had their origin in China.
After carrying out the gruesome massacre at the Baisaran Meadows, the terrorists are believed to have fled through the Pahalgam jungles and possibly left using a vehicle as they had a window of nearly 40 minutes before the security forces could even understand the magnitude of the attack.
Investigators said a vehicle bearing a Shopian registration number was seen on the road leading out of Pahalgam, but it could not be seen anywhere thereafter as some of the CCTVs on the roads were malfunctioning.
The role of some others in the massacre is also being ascertained. The NIA has filed a charge sheet against the LeT and six people, including the three slain terrorists identified as Faisal Jatt alias Suleman, Habeeb Tahir alias Chottu and Hamza Afghani.
LeT self-styled “commander” Sajid Jatt alias Sajid Jutt as well as Bashir Ahmad Jothatd and Parvaiz Ahmad, the two locals who provided food and shelter for five hours to the terrorists a day before the attack, have also been named in the chargesheet.
The terrorists were also provided ‘haldi’ (turmeric), ‘mirchi’ (red chillies) and salt in a polythene bag, along with a cooking utensil, blankets and a tarpaulin. The blanket was recovered from the encounter site in Dachigam. DNA analysis of a hair strand found in the blanket conclusively established that it was the same one taken from Bashir’s home on April 21.
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