A team from Pakistan, including officials of its Inter Services Intelligences or ISI, will meet with National Investigation Agency (NIA) officers in Delhi as it begins its inquiry today into the terror attack in the Pathankot air base at the start of this year.
The five-member joint investigation team, which includes Pakistan’s military intelligence and police, arrived on Sunday and is expected to travel tomorrow to Pathankot, where six Pakistani terrorists attacked a strategic airbase on January 2.
Sources say the Pakistani team will be allowed limited access to the airbase where seven military personnel were killed while fighting the terrorists.
Indian officials have barricaded the area of attack to prevent any view of the technical or sensitive area where military assets including fighter jets are kept.
The team, say sources, will be allowed to meet witnesses but not security personnel.
“The Pakistan team can question witnesses, but not personnel from the NSG (National Security Guard), Garud (Airforce commando unit) or BSF (Border Security Force),” sources said.
The witnesses include a police officer who had said he was kidnapped by the terrorists who used his car to drive up to the air force base.
This is the first time that Pakistani intelligence and police officials have come to India to investigate a terror attack.
The team, formed on instructions of Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, will also be taken to the point on the border from where the terrorists are believed to have entered India.
India has blamed Pakistan-based terror group Jaish-e-Mohammed for the attack. The National Investigation Agency says it has established the identities of the terrorists who were killed in the attack and also of those who regulated their actions from Pakistani soil.
India is allowing access to Pakistani investigators for the first time hoping Islamabad will reciprocate the gesture, sources said. It is in the “spirit of goodwill and cooperation” that the access is being extended, they added. At a later date, India may ask Pakistan to permit a team of Indian investigators to visit Pakistan.