When Islamist terrorists attacked a tourist resort last week in the India-controlled province of Kashmir, they killed 26 victims and brought two nuclear powers to the brink of war.
Now, a video is making headlines for its portrayal of a tourist cruising on a zip line well above the ground as the caught-on-camera carnage began.
But the story surrounding it is even more harrowing than the video showed.
The video is below. At its beginning, the operator of the ride could clearly be heard saying “Allahu akbar” three times before releasing the passenger, who was taking video with a selfie stick during the ride.
During the ride, gunshots broke out, and one man could be seen dropping to the ground, apparently hit.
Locals don’t typically chant “Allah-o-Akbar” on repeat as a routine while conducting tourist rides.
But this person was saying it with gunshots in the background. He clearly knew what was happening but still didn’t stop the ride. The tourist, unaware of the situation, filmed… pic.twitter.com/Q6VFemGVOd
— THE SKIN DOCTOR (@theskindoctor13) April 28, 2025
According to a report Wednesday on CNN News 18, an English-language channel based in India, the tourist was identified as Rishi Bhatt.
Bhatt, according to the major English-language daily Times of India, was visiting with his family from Ahmedabad, an overwhelmingly Hindu city in western India.
“When I took the zipline, one person said, ‘Allahu akbar,’ and moved his head left and right, and then the firing started from those sides,” Bhatt told CNN News 18.
It wasn’t his imagination.
“Both the brutal terror attack and the zip line operator’s ‘Allahu Akbar’ chants were recorded on Bhatt’s camera,” the English language news magazine India Today reported.
The father of the operator, however, told the station his son did nothing wrong.
The expression “Allahu akbar” — “God is greatest” in Arabic — is inextricably linked in the Western mind to Islamist savagery — given the proclivity of Muslim terrorists to shout it before beginning their missions of butchering the innocent.
But the ride operator’s father maintained that it’s a common prayer for Muslims in a time of stress.
“We are Muslims, even if the storm comes we say ‘Allahu Akbar’,” the father told CNN News 18.
The ride operator, identified by the name Muzammil, was picked up by India’s National Investigation Agency for questioning, according to CNN News 18. He told investigators he knew nothing about the attack, but heard two shots fired just as he released Bhatt.
However, the station reported that intelligence sources said Muzammil was “frequently changing his statements” under questioning.
Bhatt, meanwhile, told a horrifying story of what happened after the video ended. He said he unlatched himself from the zipline when he realized what was happening, according to the Times of India.
“Nine people zip lined before me, but the operator did not utter a word,” he told Asian News International, according to the newspaper. “When I was sliding, he spoke, and then the firing started. … He said ‘Allahu Akbar’ thrice and then the firing started.
“After about 20 seconds, I realised that it was a terrorist attack … and people on the ground are being killed. I saw 5-6 people getting shot.”
One of those he saw shot might have been a man who could be seen in the video, running on the ground and then falling.
The man first appeared about the 40-second mark in the video above, running to Bhatt’s left on the screen.
About the 44-second mark, he could be seen falling violently to the ground backward, as though he had been struck from the front.
Bhatt said he detached himself from the zipline and dropped to the ground, joining his wife and son, who’d ridden the zip line before him.
“I found out that men in two families ahead of us were asked their religion and shot in front of my wife and son,” he said, according to the Times of India.
He said there was a brief pause in firing before shooting started again.
“Fifteen-16 tourists were shot in front of us,” he told
The video raises obvious questions, such as whether the ride operator was aware of the attack beforehand, and if so, how many other employees in the park could have been as well.
It’s also curious that Bhatt’s behavior in the video might appear to be not what a viewer expects from a man who was actually becoming aware of the bloodshed being caused below.
But the Indian subcontinent has bigger questions at hand right now, with nuclear-armed India and Pakistan apparently on the cusp of a military clash.
Do you expect another war between India and Pakistan over this attack?
The two countries have a history of fighting, including four full-fledged wars, going back to the partition of the subcontinent in 1947. And tensions over the disputed province of Kashmir are a near-constant factor.
If war breaks out again over the Islamist atrocity in the India-controlled area of Pahalgam, its first shots will have been recorded by a tourist with a selfie stick who was at first oblivious to the crime taking place beneath him.
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