The Indian Government has rubbished Pakistani media reports that the terror attack on the Pathankot airbase was a drama staged by India to malign Pakistan. Rejecting the media reports that quoted Pakistani Joint Investigation Team (JIT) members as saying there was no evidence to link Pakistan to the Pathankot attack, sources in the Indian Government said the very fact JIT came to India to collect evidence against involvement of their citizens is self-explanatory. Sources also termed media reports as “concocted.”
“While in India, the JIT took onboard the detailed evidence which was shared by National Investigation Agency. Since the JIT collected evidence in accordance with a Pakistani law which applies to Pak citizens committing an offence abroad, the involvement of Pakistanis in the Pathankot attack is self-evident,” sources said.
The Indian reaction came following a report in Pakistan Today attributed to JIT officials who told the paper that the attack on Pathankot airbase was a drama staged by India to malign Pakistan for being involved in terrorism, and there was no evidence to show that attackers entered from their side. It also said the JIT members have complained that Indian authorities did not cooperate with Pakistan in investigation and instead made efforts to hinder the probe. The JIT is expected to submit its report to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in next few days.
However, there is no official word from the Pakistani Government on this.
Interestingly, the report that the JIT is to submit to its PM seems to be already floating in the media while Governments on both sides await findings.
According to Pakistan Today that published the “findings” of the JIT, the Pak investigating team has concluded that the Indian authorities had prior information about the attackers and that India used the attack as a tool to expand its “vicious propaganda” against Pakistan “without having any solid evidence to back the claim”.
“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,” the Pak source told its media quoting the report.
The JIT report according to Pakistan Today claims that within hours of the assault, all the attackers were shot dead by the Indian security forces. “However, the Indian authorities made it a three-day drama to get maximum attention from the world community in order to malign Pakistan,” the paper quoted the report.
The JIT source that briefed Pak media aid that the total duration of its visit to the base was about 55 minutes and the team was denied opportunity to collect evidence from the site. He added that no major damage was done to the base and that the Indian authorities showed the JIT the place from where the assailants had entered the base. He said the investigators were informed that perimeter lights were also not functional on the day of the attack.
The Pak official told media that the Indian claims about the entry from the Pakistani side were unsupported as they failed to answer why the electric fence on the border failed to hinder the entry. “The Indian response was ridiculous. They claimed that the breach was possible as power was not running through the electric fence due to some electricity problem that night. Another flaw in Indian claim is that the airbase perimeter lamps were turned off despite a 28-hour early warning of an attack,” he told Pak media.
The Pak JIT source said that the report concludes that the Indian allegations about the involvement of Pakistan’s non-state actors in the Pathankot airbase attack have not been established and “what appears from the Indian side is a case of a badly knitted stage drama”. “The report concludes that the Pathankot attack looked like another false flag operation fully facilitated by the Indian Army just to put the blame on Pakistan,” the official reportedly told media.