Pak JIT to get limited access to Pathankot airbase

Team reaches India today; witnesses, except security personnel,to be lined up for investigators

NEW DELHI: India plans to give the Pakistan probe team access to all witnesses to the Pathankot terror attack but not to the National Security Guard or BSF personnel.

The Joint Investigation Team (JIT) will arrive here on Sunday (today), the Indian media reported.

Official sources said on the eve of the JIT’s arrival, India will also press for the visit of its probe team to Pakistan to carry out investigations.

The sources said the five-member delegation led by Chief of Punjab’s Counter Terrorism Department (CTD), Additional Inspector General of Police Muhammad Tahir Rai will not be provided complete access to the Pathankot airbase but to limited areas where Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorists were engaged in an 80-hour gunbattle with security forces.

The Pakistani team, which also comprises Lahore’s Deputy Director General Intelligence Bureau Mohammad Azim Arshad, Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) Lt Col Tanvir Ahmed, Military Intelligence Lt Col Irfan Mirza and Gujaranwala CTD Investigating Officer Shahid Tanveer, will be brought to the airbase in a special plane on March 29.

The airbase will be visually barricaded by the NIA to prevent any view of its critical areas. 

The team will be briefed thoroughly on March 28 at the NIA headquarters here which will include a 90-minute presentation on the investigations carried out so far, the sources said.

This will be the first time that Pakistani intelligence and police officials are traveling to India to investigate a terror attack.

Witnesses, excepting personnel of the NSG, BSF and Garud commandos of IAF, have been lined up for the Pakistan probe team.

The witnesses include Punjab Police Superintendent of Police Salwinder Singh, his jeweller friend Rajesh Verma and cook Madan Gopal and 17 injured people.