Probe Links Pahalgam Attackers’ Phone to Pakistan Terror-Financing Bank

India’s terror probe agency has found a clear-cut clue to link the terrorists, who perpetrated the Pahalgam attacks in April 2025, to Pakistan and the funding source.

In a breakthrough in the probe in Jammu and Kashmir, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) has traced a mobile phone used by the terrorists belonging to The Resistance Force (TRF), an offshoot of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Toiba.

The NIA probe has revealed that the phone was imported into Pakistan in a consignment financed by Karachi-based Faysal Bank, which has been previously linked to terror-related cases.

The NIA has been probing the Pahalgam attacks since last year, and the investigation into the terrorist groups involved in the gruesome killing of 26 civilians continues.

After the April 2026 Pahalgam terror strike, India launched Operation Sindoor in May 2026 to hit and destroy terror infrastructure inside Pakistan and its occupied territories, which led to a four-day war between the nuclear-armed neighbours.

As part of the war, India not only destroyed nine terror sites but also caused severe damage to 11 military bases of the Pakistani military, following which Islamabad called New Delhi through the army hotline to seek a halt in the military operations, which was accepted.

According to reports, the NIA found that the Pahalgam attackers carried two Chinese Xiaomi Redmi-series phones. The first, an orange-coloured Redmi 9T, imported to Pakistan in 2021, and the second, a black-coloured Redmi Note 12, imported in 2023.

The two phones were found on the bodies of terrorists, Faisal Jatt alias Suleiman Shah, Habeeb Tahir alias Jibran, and Hamza Afghani, who were killed by Indian security forces in Dachigam forest in Jammu and Kashmir on July 28, 2025, during an anti-terror operation.

The Redmi 9T arrived from a consignment imported by Tech Sirat Private Limited, a Pakistani company with offices on Clifton Road in Karachi, on January 1, 2021.

However, the logistics company listed on the consignment was Faysal Bank, and the delivery address was recorded as the bank’s official main branch address in Karachi’s Shahrah-e-Faisal.

“Tech Sirat must have received the consignment, but the import documents show delivery to the bank since it has financed it. The phone used by the Pahalgam attackers appears to have been smuggled out of this consignment and found its way to the Lashkar-e-Toiba,” an unnamed NIA officer was quoted by the report as saying.

“Notably, since the import in 2021, the phone was never switched on until the Pahalgam attack. It appears that it was whisked away from the consignment for precisely the purpose of being handed over to a terrorist,” the officer said.

Faysal Bank has operated in Pakistan since October 1994 as a public limited company under the Companies Ordinance, 1984. The financial institution began as a subsidiary of the Faysal Islamic Bank, a Bahraini institution owned by Mohammed bin Faisal Al Saud, the son of the late King Faisal of Saudi Arabia.

Since it was set up in Pakistan, the bank has grown, and its shares are listed on the Pakistan Stock Exchange, with branches spread over 360 cities and towns in Pakistan, the NIA noted.

But this was not the first time the Faysal Bank has been linked, though indirectly, to a terror investigation. After the Twin Towers terror attack in New York in the US in 2001, the bank was listed in court filings.

In the 9/11 attacks in the US involving Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda, found and killed inside Pakistan, the lawsuits noted that two terror groups in Pakistan had their deposit accounts at Faysal Bank. The US designated these groups, Lashkar-e-Toiba and Lajnat al-Dawa, a Karachi-based institution, as terror supporters of al Qaeda.

Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency also started gathering information on the bank account holders of these terror groups and found that many were banned. Yet, the groups had opened and maintained several local and foreign currency deposit accounts with several nationalised and commercial banks such as the Habib Bank, National Bank, Allied Bank, Muslim Commercial Bank, and particularly, the Faysal Bank.

Apart from the phone’s origin, the NIA in its chargesheet on the Pahalgam terror attacks detailed how Pakistan-based handlers, with links to the Lashkar-e-Toiba and The Resistance Force, planned and executed the strike.

The NIA chargesheet established clear links between the attackers and their handlers in Pakistan, sharing details of their IP addresses, phone numbers, and other evidence.

In the chargesheet, the NIA has gathered and presented evidence on the Lashkar-e-Toiba and the Resistance Force conspiracy through their Pakistan handler, Sajit Satt, who managed the terrorists’ movement, targeting, drone drops, weapon supply, and communications through Pakistan-origin phones.

The NIA also tracked the first TRF claim of responsibility for the Pahalgam attacks were posted on the Telegram channel ‘Kashmir Fight’ operated from Battagram in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

The investigators also retrieved photos and maps of the Baisaran Meadow in Pahalgam on the mobile phones, with one photograph of a tent that the terrorists had set up on March 30, 2025, weeks ahead of the attack.

The tent, with a stove visible on the side, appeared pitched at a height, putting the terrorists at an advantage to observe the movement of security forces.