A day ahead of the arrival of the Pakistan JIT, the NIA on Friday summoned three persons, including SP of Punjab Police Salvinder Singh for questioning in connection with the Pathankot terror strike.
The five-member Joint Investigation Team headed by Punjab Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) additional Inspector General Muhammad Tahir Rai is all set to arrive on Sunday.
While the Pak SIT is seeking to gather evidence and carry forward the probe into the Pathankkot airbase attack carried out by Jaish-e-Mohammad, Islamabad is yet to send a letters Rogatory to India to seek information related to the case legally.
Officials remained tight-lipped over the issue of granting access to the Pak team to the sensitive forward base or granting it access to NSA Ajit Doval on whose complaint Islamabad had initiated the probe into the case.
NIA officials said that Salvinder Singh, his jeweller friend Rajesh Verma and cook Madan Gopal have been summoned for a routine questioning as the agency is preparing to receive a five-member Special Investigation Team (SIT) from Pakistan on March 27.
This is a routine investigation as some formalities have to be completed before a chargesheet is filed in the case, the sources said, adding they may be presented before the SIT.
All the three were allegedly kidnapped on the intervening night of December 31 and January 1 allegedly by Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorists, who had launched an audacious attack on the Pathankot IAF base on January 1 morning.
The NIA that is probing the case here is likely to share the evidence gathered so far during the investigation with the Pak SIT comprising officials from different departments of that country.
India has already sent a letters Rogatory to Pakistan seeking certain details about the four terrorists. India has been seeking details of the phone numbers dialled by the four terrorists ahead of the attack on the airbase on the intervening night of January 1 and 2.
The numbers are suspected to be in the names of people connected with Jaish-e-Mohammed terror group, including Mullah Dadullah and Kashif Jaan. The numbers shared belong to the Pakistani telecom operators like Mobilink, Warid and Telenor.
NIA has also sought details and picture from Khayam Baber of her son who was part of the suicide squad that carried out the attack.
Kashif Jaan, one of the key handlers of the attackers, had accompanied the terrorists till the border, the sources said.
The bodies of the four terrorists have been preserved. Out of the four, two of them have been identified as Nasir and Salim. Nasir was the one who had called his mother Baber in Bhawalpur using the phone snatched from the jeweller friend of Punjab Police SP Salwinder Singh.