Pathankot terror attack: Pakistan's Joint Investigation Team meets NIA

Delhi: A five-member Joint Investigation Team (JIT) from Pakistan, which reached India yesterday to carry out a probe into the attack at the IAF base at Pathankot, met National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Monday.

The team met NIA officials at their headquarters in central Delhi.

This is the first-ever such visit to the country to probe a terror case.

The team will on Tuesday visit Pathankot and is headed by Chief of Punjab's Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) Muhammad Tahir Rai and comprises Lahore's Deputy Director General Intelligence Bureau Mohammad Azim Arshad, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) official Lt Col Tanvir Ahmed, Military Intelligence official Lt Col Irfan Mirza and Gujaranwala CTD Investigating Officer Shahid Tanveer.

In the post-lunch session, the Pakistani team would be raising their set of questions to the NIA investigators to clear doubts, if any.

The IAF airbase will be visually barricaded by NIA to prevent any view of its critical areas and NIA team would show some of the areas where the Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorists were engaged in an 80-hour-long gun battle with security personnel.

India plans to provide the probe team from Pakistan access to all witnesses in the Pathankot terror attack case but not security personnel from National Security Guard or the BSF.

The sources said that cooperation to the Pakistani team would be based on the principle of reciprocity hoping that an Indian team would be allowed to travel to Pakistan at a later date.

Witnesses, excepting personnel of 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. 

Seven security personnel were killed in the attack.

(With PTI inputs)