India avenged the April 22 massacre in 22 Minutes: PM Modi

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday declared that India had avenged the April 22 Pahalgam attack in just 22 minutes, offering a strikingly timed response to a deadly terrorist assault that had shaken the nation.

Addressing a rally in Rajasthan’s Bikaner, Modi confirmed that the Indian armed forces had carried out Operation Sindoor, a precise and coordinated military strike that dismantled nine terrorist camps across Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. The name of the operation—Sindoor—was deliberately chosen to honour the memory of the 26 Indians killed in the April 22 attack, including Lieutenant Vinay Narwal, a young Navy officer recently married.

“Those who tried to wipe off the sindoor of our daughters have been reduced to dust,” Modi said to loud cheers from the crowd. “India is no longer the country that stays silent. This is New India—one that hits back.”

The Prime Minister’s comments were laden with symbolism and strategic signalling. He referred to sindoor, the traditional vermilion worn by married Hindu women, as a metaphor for the pain and dignity of the soldiers’ widows. The transformation of “sindoor into barood” (vermillion into gunpowder), as Modi put it, captured both the emotional and martial dimensions of the response.

Modi said the strikes were completed in 22 minutes, one for each day since the April 22 ambush on an army convoy in Jammu & Kashmir’s Pahalgam area. “India’s enemies understand now that their actions will be met with consequences, swift and surgical,” he said.

Carried out in the early hours of May 7, Operation Sindoor was a joint effort by the Indian Army, Air Force and Navy. The operation specifically targeted infrastructure used by terrorist organisations such as Jaish-e-Mohammed, Lashkar-e-Taiba, and Hizbul Mujahideen.

According to officials, the Indian military avoided civilian areas and Pakistani military installations, underscoring a deliberate, focused retaliation rather than a broader escalation. According to External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, the decision to cease hostilities was reached bilaterally between India and Pakistan, without third-party mediation.

For the Modi government, the mission serves multiple objectives: it avenges a national tragedy, projects strength ahead of elections and reasserts India’s strategic autonomy. As Modi put it, “This is the era of decisive leadership. We will not let the blood of our brave soldiers go in vain.”

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