Pak JIT dubs Pathankot attack as 'staged drama': Leaked report

New Delhi: After claiming that Indian authorities "failed" to provide evidence to prove that Pakistan-based terrorists had stormed the IAF base, Paksitan Joint Investigation Team in its report has dubbed the Pathankot attack as a 'drama staged to malign Pakistan', a media report in Pakistan said. "The JIT’s report says that the Indian government did not cooperate with the team and instead made efforts to hinder the probe by the Pakistani team," Pakistan today reported its sources as saying. “Indian authorities also failed to establish that the attackers entered from Pakistan,” the report said citing sources. "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.... This finding has made it clear that the attack was a drama staged to malign Pakistan and persuade the world community that Pakistan is involved in terrorism," the newspaper quotes source as saying. According to the newspaper, Pakistan JIT also questioned murder of  India's National Investigation Agency officer Tanzil Ahmad who was shot dead by two unidentified motorcycle -borne assailants on Sunday. The Pakistan JIT 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,” sources were quoted as saying by Pakistan Today. India's initiative of inviting Pakistan probe team to Pathankot to investigate the Indian Airbase attack seems to have backfired if this media report proves to be true. However, the National Investigation Agency sources said that they are waiting for official report of Pakistan JIT on Pathankot attack. Meanwhile, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal slammed BJP government for inviting and giving access to Pakistan Intelligence agency Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) to Pathankot after the media report surfaced. "BJP  and RSS chant "Bharat Mata Ki Jai" but backstab mother India by inviting ISI to India," Kejriwal tweeted.

मुँह में राम बग़ल में छुरी। BJP/RSS वाले मुँह से "भारत माता की जय" बोलते है और ISI को बुलाकर भारत माता की पीठ में छुरा भोंक देते हैं।

— Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) April 5, 2016

Earlier, a day after its return from India, the Pakistani Joint Investigation Team (JIT) probing the Pathankot attack had claimed that Indian authorities "failed" to provide evidence to prove that Pakistan-based terrorists had stormed the IAF base, a media report had said.. Pakistani investigators were allowed to enter the military airbase from the narrow adjacent routes instead of the main entrance and their duration of the visit was just 55 minutes, enough to take a mere walk through the military facility, sources close to the JIT were quoted as saying by Geo News. The JIT could not collect evidence in this limited time, the report said citing sources. The JIT members visited the Pathankot airbase on March 29 where National Investigation Agency (NIA) officials briefed them and showed them the route from where the attackers stormed the airbase. The sources were quoted as saying that the lights along the 24-km perimeter wall of the Pathankot airbase were found to be faulty on the eve of the attack. However, the report claimed that the Pakistani team was only informed about the negligence of Border Security Force (BSF) and Indian forces. The JIT returned on April 1 after their five-day visit to India during which all evidence pertaining to the attack was shared with them, including the DNA of four terrorists, their identity as well as call records showing involvement of Jaish-e-Mohammed(JeM) terrorists behind the attack on the Pathankot air base during the intervening night of January 1 and 2.