Pak probe team gets restricted access in Pathankot

Pakistani investigators were on Tuesday given restricted access to the Pathankot airbase area where Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorists mounted an attack in January.

Tent walls were erected inside the airbase to limit physical and visual access to strategic installations inside. It is for the first time that a Pakistani probe team has been granted access to a strategic base to probe a terror strike in India.

An entry point was made on the rear of the perimeter of the base to bring in the Pakistan Joint Investigation Team (JIT). Vital inputs gathered by the NIA at the end of the 80-hour gun battle were shared with the visiting team. Material evidence collected from the bodies of the four terrorists killed in the operation were also shared with investigators. 

The entire process was videographed by the Air Force. After touring the area, Pakistani team led by Punjab’s Additional Inspector General of Police (Counter Terrorism) Muhammad Tahir Rai and others, including ISI’s Lt Col Tanvir Ahmed, returned to Delhi.

The team also visited the spots where driver Ekagra Singh was killed and Superintendent of Police Salwinder Singh was abducted along with his vehicle.

Activists from the Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party held protests close to the airbase against the presence of an ISI official in the probe team. Volunteers also raised anti-Pakistan slogans and condemned the Modi government.

NIA officials and senior officials of the Punjab Police accompanied the Pakistan investigators. An attempt was made to reconstruct the terror scene before the investigators.

The terrorists who stormed the airbase in the wee hours of January 2 were restricted to an area which did not have strategic assets of the Air Force. Only a mess and some quarters were operational in the limited area. NIA officials took the Pakistan team to the entire area where the operation was carried out to neutralise the terrorists.

Some reports also suggest the Pakistani team was also taken to certain forward border areas from where it is suspected that the terrorists may have entered India.

The Pathankot attack took place barely six months after the terror strike at Dinanagar town, close to Pathankot, on July 27  last.
DH News Service


NIA to ask Pak to access Azhar
NIA Director General Sharad Kumar said on Tuesday that India will ask Pakistan to allow access to JeM terrorist Masood Azhar who is considered to be the mastermind behind the Pathankot terror strike, DHNS reports .

Kumar's remarks came on a day NIA took five members of the Pakistan's JIT to Pathankot airbase where they were given a restricted access to the attack spot. “We will ask for access to Masood Azhar,” NIA chief Sharad Kumar said. A formal request would be sent after the JIT returns to their country.