In a first of sorts, a five-member Joint Investigation Team (JIT) from Pakistan that included an ISI official reached New Delhi on Sunday to probe the terror attack at the Pathankot IAF base. The team was received by officials of the NIA and Pakistan High Commission.
The JIT will analyse investigations being carried out by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) so far. As per the reports, NIA officials will give a presentation on the progress made in the case and also how it expects the Pakistan team to aid the probe.
The Evidence
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According to The Hindu, India will hand over the DNA samples of the four terrorists killed to JIT. The team is expected to track down the families of the terrorists in Pakistan and match the samples. DNA samples were taken from the energy drink that they are believed to have consumed before carrying out the suicide attack,
Reports suggest that more evidence about the involvement of Pakistan-based JeM’s operatives in the attack is likely to be provided to the JIT. NIA has prepared a dossier on JeM chief Masood Azhar and handlers Abdul Rauf and Kaashif Jaan who had dropped the terrorists at the Punjab border on 31 December.
The Pakistani team would also seek clarification on the probe before they fly to Pathankot in a special plane on Tuesday morning.
The IAF airbase will be visually barricaded to prevent any view of its critical areas and NIA team would show some of the areas where the Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorists were engaged in an 80-hour-long gun battle with security personnel.
India plans to provide the probe team access to all witnesses but not security personnel from National Security Guard or the BSF. The witnesses include Punjab Police Superintendent of Police Salwinder Singh, his jeweller friend Rajesh Verma and cook Madan Gopal and 17 injured people.
NIA has also given details, including the batch numbers of food packets used by the terrorists after infiltrating into India.
Principle of Reciprocity
Sources said that cooperation to the Pakistani team would be based on the principle of reciprocity hoping that an Indian team would be allowed to travel to Pakistan at a later date.
The team is headed by Chief of Punjab’s Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) Muhammad Tahir Rai and comprises Lahore’s Deputy Director General Intelligence Bureau Mohammad Azim Arshad, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) official Lt Col Tanvir Ahmed, Military Intelligence official Lt Col Irfan Mirza and Gujaranwala CTD Investigating Officer Shahid Tanveer.
The terrorists were engaged in an 80-hour gunbattle with the security forces in January. Seven security personnel were killed, while four bodies of terrorists belonging were recovered which have been preserved. Out of the four, two of them have been identified as Nasir and Salim. Nasir had reprtedly called his mother Baber in Bhawalpur using the phone snatched from the jeweller friend of Punjab Police SP Salwinder Singh.
According to sources, India will also raise similarities between the Pathankot attack and those in Samba and Kathua last year like using same GPS and wirless sets, the modus operandi of hijacking cars, energy drink ‘Red bull’, identical wire cutters and arms and ammunition of Eastern Europe, Russian and Chinese make which available in the Af-Pak region.
(With PTI inputs.)
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