‘She's my daughter': How Kashmiri guide Nazakat Ali saved BJP leader's daughter from terrorists in Pahalgam attack

Mint

26-04-2025

'She's my daughter': A Kashmiri guide, the cousin of the only local killed in the Pahalgam terror attack, saved the life of a BJP leader's daughter by calling her his own.
Arvind Agrawal, a member of the Chhattisgarh unit of Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM), the youth wing of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), was in the Baisaran Valley when the heinous terror attack, in which 26 tourists were killed, took place.
Hailing from Raipur, Agrawal was on a holiday in Kashmir with his wife, children, and several family friends—11 people in total.
Two days after the attack, the BJP leader wrote a heartfelt post for Nazakat Ali, their tour guide, and said, 'You risked your life to save ours. We will never be able to thank Nazakat bhai enough.' Arvind Agrawal's Facebook post
Talking to The Quint over the phone, Arvind Agrawal said he and his group ducked upon hearing gunshots and screams from nearby, and had also attempted to jump the fences to escape.
However, he said, his four-year-old daughter Samriddhi got scared by the noise and started to run across the open ground. While his friends physically held him back, his wife, Pooja, followed their daughter to rescue her.
'I was confused whether it was the sound of bullets or crackers. My wife, Pooja, by then, had already reached the middle of the ground where my friend and his family were,' he said.
But to save the day, 'Nazakat bhai was with them.'
'He was holding my daughter,' Agrawal said, adding that when a terrorist asked Nazakat who the girl was, 'he replied that she was his daughter. He left after.'
Agrawal shared that the local ponywallahs then helped them escape on ponies. He also said that the locals then helped take his wife to the hospital, as she had fractured her shoulder.
'While escaping, my wife fractured her shoulder, and with the help of locals, we were taken to the Pahalgam Hospital.'
Nazakat Ali told the Quint that he was playing with the children when he heard gunshots.
'I was playing with the children when we heard one or two shots going off. We assumed some children were playing with crackers, but the firing increased around that time. So, I grabbed the children and took off,' he said.
He said the 'incident marks the death of humanity,' but he is thankful to have been able to save the tourists and their children.
'It should not have happened at any cost. I just find happiness in the fact that I could rescue those 11 people and make sure they reached home safely,' Nazakat said.
He shared that Arvind Agrawal and his family took shelter while he carried their children to their cars. 'I then took them to Pahalgam, from where they were taken to Srinagar,' Nazakat recalled.
First Published: 26 Apr 2025, 12:09 PM IST