Pak dismisses dossier on Pulwama; India not surprised

India on Thursday said that it was disappointed, but not surprised, as Pakistan claimed that its own probe found no link between any individual or entity based in its territory and the February 14 terror attack in Pulwama, Jammu and Kashmir.

“We are disappointed at Pakistan’s response to our detailed dossier on the Jaish-e-Mohammed’s complicity in the cross-border terror attack in Pulwama and the presence of its terror camps and leadership in Pakistan,” Raveesh Kumar, spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), said.

His comment came after Pakistan sent its response on the dossier it had received from India on February 27.

The dossier had detailed the role of the Jaish-e-Mohammad in the February 14 killing of over 40 Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel in Jammu and Kashmir. It contained information about 90 terrorists based in Pakistan in addition to location and other details about as many as 22 camps of the JeM and other terrorist organizations across the neighbouring country.

Islamabad on Thursday conveyed to New Delhi that its agencies could not find any terror camp in any of the 22 places India had claimed in its dossier as locations of the facilities run by the JeM, Lashkar-e-Taiba and other terrorist organizations across Pakistan.

Pakistan also claimed that its law-enforcing agencies had detained and investigated 54 of the 90 people identified by India, but none of them had been found to be linked with the suicide bombing in Pulwama.

“Regrettably,” the MEA said in New Delhi, “Pakistan continues to be in denial and even refuses to acknowledge Pulwama as a terror attack. It has not shared details of credible action, if any, taken by it against terrorists or terrorist organizations based in territories under its control.”

The MEA spokesperson said that New Delhi wasn't surprised, as the “identical script was followed by Pakistan Government in the past, after the terror attacks in Mumbai in 2008 or the attack on Indian Air Force base at Pathankot in Punjab in 2016.

“It is a well-known fact that the UN-designated terrorist organization Jaish-e-Mohammed and its leader Masood Azhar are based in Pakistan. This was again acknowledged recently to international media by Pakistan’s Foreign Minister (Shah Mahmood Qureshi),” said Kumar.

“There's no dearth of sufficient actionable information and evidence in Pakistan itself to take action against them if there is sincerity and intent to do so.'

New Delhi on Thursday reiterated that Pakistan should abide by the commitment it had given in 2004, and which its current leadership had recently repeated, vowing not to allow any territory under its control to be used for terrorism against India in any manner. Pakistan should take immediate, credible, irreversible and verifiable actions against terrorists and terror organizations operating from territories under its control, said the MEA spokesperson.