Six western tourists and their two guides were kidnapped in the Liddarwat area of Pahalgam in the Anantnag district of Jammu and Kashmir, India on 4 July 1995 by forty militants from the Kashmiri Islamist militant organisation Harkat-ul-Ansar, under the pseudonym of Al-Faran, in order to secure the release of Harkat leader Masood Azhar and other militants.