Mumbai, May 11: Bollywood actor Amitabh Bachchan on Sunday ended his much-criticized silence and praised the Indian armed forces for their strong response to Pakistan following the Pahalgam terror attack.
Bachchan, who had been criticized for not speaking out after the April 22 attack in Pahalgam, returned to X with a heartfelt tribute that included poetic lines from his father, Harivansh Rai Bachchan.
Since the attack, in which 26 innocent civilians were brutally killed by the Pakistan-backed group The Resistance Front (TRF), Bachchan's X account had been unusually silent.
His last meaningful post on April 22 read, "The silent X chromosome... deciding the brain..." After that, he only posted 'T' serial numbers with no messages, until Sunday.
Remembering the horror of the massacre, Bachchan wrote in Hindi (loosely translated as), "While people were celebrating the holidays, that monster dragged an innocent couple outside, stripped the husband, and after checking his religion, began shooting him. Even when the wife begged and cried on her knees, asking him not to kill her husband, that cowardly monster shot him ruthlessly, leaving the wife a widow."
He also shared the terrorists' response when the victims begged to be killed together: "When the wife said 'Kill me too!' the monster replied, 'No! Go and tell...!'"
According to survivors, the terrorist coldly told one of the victims, "Tumhe nahi marenge, tum jaake Modi ko batana (We won't kill you, you go tell Modi).
However, Bachchan did not directly mention Prime Minister Narendra Modi's name in his post.
Reflecting on the emotional pain experienced by the victims' families, Bachchan shared a powerful line from a poem by his father, Harivansh Rai Bachchan: "I remembered a line from my respected father’s poem about my daughter's state of mind. Suppose the daughter went to '...' and said, 'With ashes in my hand, the world is asking for vermilion.'"
He then linked it to the armed forces' response, saying, "So '...’ gave the Sindoor!!! OPERATION SINDOOR!!!"
Operation Sindoor was the name given to the precise strikes carried out by the Indian armed forces on May 7, targeting nine major terrorist sites in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.
Ending with an inspiring message, Bachchan wrote: "Jai Hind, Jai Hind ki Sena. You will never stop, never turn back, and never bow down. Take the oath, take the oath, take the oath! Path of fire, path of fire, path of fire!!!" – echoing his father's famous poem 'Agneepath,' symbolizing strong determination.
