Heartbreaking story behind viral Pahalgam photo: A Navy officer, schoolteacher wife on their honeymoon

Navy lieutenant Vinay Narwal and his wife, Himanshi, a school teacher, are the couple shown in the photo that illustrated the tragedy at a picturesque meadow in Kashmir after 26 tourists were killed in a terrorist attack on Tuesday, relatives of the couple and navy officials said.

The couple were wed six days ago and were in Baisaran, near Pahalgam town in Jammu and Kashmir’s Anantnag district, as part of their honeymoon. They had planned to go to Switzerland, but the visa was taking too long. They settled for Pahalgam, relatives said.

Tuesday’s deadly attack came 48 hours after they landed in Srinagar.

At the time when the couple’s photo was circulating on social media on Tuesday, the identity of the person lying on the ground and the grieving young woman next to him, still in her bridal bangles, was unclear. Nor was it clear if the man was still alive.

HT showed the photo of the couple in the meadow to Himanshi’s family in Gurugram’s Sector 47 house. “Yes, it’s her and her husband lying on the ground,” said Himanshi’s maternal aunt Babita, who goes by a single name.

Navy officials separately said this photo was of Lt Narwal and his wife.

The photo was widely shared on social media in the aftermath of the attack. It was distributed by the Press Trust of India news agency after it was arranged by a stringer in Srinagar. It seems to have been clicked on a mobile phone and is not a screen grab, a person in PTI’s Delhi office said.

The family heard about the attack on Wednesday afternoon, long before the news broke out on television channels. “Himanshi called her brother Lakshit to say that terrorists had killed Vinay. We were hoping it wasn’t true. But then their pictures began circulating on social media and news channels. That’s when we knew,” Babita said.

Himanshi’s parents rushed to Pahalgam with Lt Narwal’s father Rajesh Narwal, who was in Karnal, on Tuesday evening, desperate to be with their children. Lieutenant Vinay Narwal ‘s body was brought to Delhi on Tuesday and will be flown to Karnal in Haryana.

The couple got engaged on April 6 and were married in Mussoorie, Uttarakhand, just ten days later, on April 16. “Everything had come together so perfectly,” said Manish, Himanshi’s elder cousin. “Their wedding was finalised in January. Our families go back a long way — Himanshi’s father and Lt Narwal’s father were close friends. It was meant to be a union of love and deep-rooted bonds.”

Inside their house in Karnal, the navy officer’s wedding sherwani was still hanging neatly in a wardrobe. His travel bag, half unpacked from Mussoorie, where he started a new life with Himanshi, now tells the story of a journey never completed.