“My father was gunned down in front of me and my sons,” Arathy R Menon, daughter of N Ramachandran, a native of Kochi who was killed in the terror attack at Baisaran Valley of Pahalgam in South Kashmir on Tuesday said while recounting her harrowing experience of the terror attack.

“When I hugged my father and cried, they hit me on the head. I don’t know if it was to shoot or to scare me. They may have left me because my children were crying. They didn’t come to us in police uniform,” Arathy, who survived the attack along with her mother and eight-year-old twin sons recounted

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“The place where the attack unfolded is called ‘mini Switzerland’. There were a lot of tourists there. Suddenly, we heard a sound. We thought it was fireworks at first. But with the next shot, I realized it was a terrorist attack. On realizing that it was a terrorist attack, I, along with my sons and father, ran towards some structures. It looked like a toilet facility. We hid behind it, while I tried to use my phone. But there was no mobile reception,” she said.

They then tried to escape by making it past the bottom of a fence and running through the forest.

“Suddenly, one of the terrorists came out. He came to the people who were running and told them to lie down on the ground. He asked each of them something before shooting them. Then he came to me and my father and asked us to recite the kalima. He kept repeating the order. But when we pleaded ignorance, he shot my father. After that, he placed the gun on my head. Seeing this my children screamed and cried out,” Arathi said.