The five-member team from Pakistan had visited the Pathankot air base yesterday.
Highlights
- Pakistan team met the NIA officials after a visit to Pathankot
- India shared phone call intercepts, postmortem reports with Pakistan team
- Tomorrow, the Pakistani team will record statement of witnesses
Pakistan has detained some suspects in the Pathankot attack case, the National Investigation Agency or NIA said today after a meeting with the Pakistani five-member team that has come to investigate the case and visited the air base.
"The Pakistani team had shared details of their investigations," NIA chief Sharad Kumar said, but he added that details of the detentions cannot be shared at this stage, since the information has operational value.
India expects full cooperation from Pakistan, having allowed the team access to all evidence and the attack site in Pathankot. And it was Pakistan's turn to share information regarding its investigation today.
"Our discussion with Pakistan was on the basis of reciprocity. The process of handing over evidence to Pakistan started today," said Sanjeev Singh, a senior official of the agency.
The evidence India has shared includes phone call intercepts and statements of witnesses. The Pakistani team, which includes a member of its Inter-Services Intelligence or ISI, has also been allowed access to air base -- retracing the steps of the terrorists and visiting the area where the 80-hour gun-battle with them had taken place.
The NIA chief said tomorrow, the team may be given access to witnesses in connection with attack, in which seven security personnel were killed in the 80-hour operation to flush out the six terrorists.
The team will also be given access to Punjab Police officer Salwinder Singh, who was allegedly abducted by the terrorists along with his jeweller friend and cook on January 1. The terrorists had used the hijacked vehicle to reach the air base.
Pakistan has not contradicted the evidence India presented earlier this week regarding the way the terrorists had infiltrated into India and the group they belong to.
Sources in Pakistan have told NDTV that it is not known if 47-year-old Azhar -- the mastermind of January's terror attack at the air base -- is still in Pakistan. Pakistani officials had earlier said that he had skipped the country.