Pakistan JIT claims India staged Pathankot terror attack, says Pak media report

Pakistan’s Joint Investigation Team (JIT) that visited India last month to investigate into the Pathankot terror attack in January has said that the incident was staged by India, according to a report in a Pakistani newspaper. The report further states that the Pakistan JIT has accused India of spreading "vicious propaganda" without any solid evidence. The Pakistan Today report has quoted a JIT member as saying that "the Indian authorities had prior information about the attackers." The JIT will submit its report to Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in next few days, according to the newspaper.

The Pakistani probe team, comprising of five members, including an officer of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), visited Pathankot on March 27. The team also met the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in Delhi and held talks with it. The JIT report, according to the newspaper, has claimed that the Indian government did not cooperate with Pakistani sleuths and "instead made efforts to hinder the probe".

"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 its JIT source as saying.

"Indian authorities also failed to establish that the attackers entered from Pakistan." It says that all the attackers were shot dead "within hours of the assault" but "the Indian authorities made it a three-day drama to get maximum attention from the world community in order to malign Pakistan," The JIT report, according to Pakistan Today, says.