Pak team in Pathankot today, will get access to crime scene at airbase

Authorities at Pathankot airbase in Punjab will take the visiting Pakistan probe team only to specific and limited areas within the Air Force Station (AFS) when it arrives on Tuesday.

The Pakistan Joint Investigation Team’s members will be kept away from the AFS’ technical area and shown only those areas where security forces engaged the Pakistani terrorists in the first week of January.

Read more: Pakistan’s Pathankot probe team gets down to work

Informed defence sources said the team members could also be shown the bodies of the killed terrorists kept in a government mortuary in the town.

Officials of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) will accompany the JIT members.

Read more: 5 things about Pak Pathankot attack probe team’s India visit

Notinteraction with IAF

The JIT will not get to interact with IAF or other defence and security officials and personnel involved in the 80-hour counter-operation by security forces against the terrorists who attacked the airbase in the early hours of January 2.

Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar said on Monday in Panaji (Goa) that the Pakistani team would not have access to the operational area of the airbase, but only the isolated “crime scene”, which has been completely barricaded and fenced.

All the terrorists and seven security personnel were killed at the base.

Watch | Families of those killed in Pathankot attack demand fair probe

The January attack on the IAF base was the second one by suspected Pakistani terrorists. A group of three Pakistani terrorists had attacked Dinanagar town in adjoining Gurdaspur district on July 27 last year, leaving seven people dead.

For the record, NIA Inspector General Sanjiv Kumar said the JIT will be taken to different locations associated with Pathankot attack case on Tuesday.

Political storm over visit:

Congress said “unfettered access” given to Pakistan’s five-member Joint Investigation Team (JIT) by according an almost “red carpet welcome” raised serious questions on procedural propriety in relation to compromise on national security and likened it to an accused investigating himself.

Endorsing the stand taken by Congress, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of “surrendering” to Pakistan by allowing its investigators to probe the Pathankot attack and said instead Indian probe agencies should have gone to that country where “actual masterminds are sitting”.