A Pakistani newspaper has claimed that the country’s Joint Investigation Team or JIT that visited Pathankot last month to inquire into the January terror attack has called the incident staged and accused India of using it to spread “vicious propaganda” without any solid evidence.
The Pakistan Today has quoted a member of the JIT as saying that “the Indian authorities had prior information about the attackers.” The team’s report will be submitted to Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in the next few days, the newspaper says.
The five-member Pakistani probe team, which included an officer of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), visited Pathankot on March 27. The team also held talks with the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in Delhi. The government faced protests by opposition parties who accused it of “rolling out the red carpet” for those who planned the strike, blamed by India on Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad.
The newspaper quotes “the JIT report” as saying that the Indian government did not cooperate with the Pakistani officials and “instead made efforts to hinder the probe” by the Pakistani team.
“The report also raises serious questions over the veracity of Indian claims regarding the Pathankot attack. The JIT has concluded that contrary to the claims of the Indian government about the duration of the encounter, the standoff between the Indian army and alleged terrorists ended within hours of the attack… This finding has made it clear that the attack was a drama staged to malign Pakistan and persuade the world community that Pakistan is involved in terrorism,” the newspaper quotes its JIT source as saying.
The JIT report, according to Pakistan Today, says: “Indian authorities also failed to establish that the attackers entered from Pakistan.”
The Pakistani newspaper has also highlighted the killing of an NIA officer in Uttar Pradesh on the weekend. It quotes a JIT member as saying that “the brutal murder of a Muslim investigator is evidence that Indian establishment wants to keep the matter under wraps.”
The NIA officer was not involved in the Pathankot probe, the agency has said.