The attack came exactly a week after Prime Minister Narendra Modi paid a surprise visit to his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif.
Highlights
- The team will be allowed on March 29 to tour the Pathankot air force base
- A note in Urdu claimed the attack was revenge for Afzal Guru's hanging
- The attack came exactly a week after PM Modi met Nawaz Sharif in Lahore
Five Pakistani investigators, including some from its powerful military intelligence agency ISI, will be allowed on March 29 to tour the Pathankot air force base which was attacked at the start of this year by terrorists from across the border.
The government has over-ruled the concerns of intelligence agencies which, according to sources, wanted a more "restricted interaction" with the Pakistani delegation.
Based on their concerns, however, the Pakistani team will not be allowed to meet key witnesses like the senior police officer who said he was kidnapped by the terrorists who used his car to drive upto the air force base. Instead, his statement and that of others will be presented to the Pakistanis.
On Sunday, the Pakistanis will land in Delhi; two days later, they will be allowed onto the base where seven military personnel were killed after terrorists opened fire on the sprawling 2,000-acre complex which houses high-value assets including fighter jets.
Sources said that the Pakistani team will be allowed to go the area where the gun -battle between the terrorist and security forces took place outside the technical area but will not be allowed within since that is where the fighters and other assets are positioned.
The Pakistan team is scheduled to return to Delhi the same day.
Items recovered from the terrorists include food tins and ammunition with labels and other details that prove their provenance, and India will present these to the visitors, said sources.
Investigators are paying special attention to a chit of paper recovered from the terrorists which was written in Urdu and dated December 25- the day Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a surprise visit to his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif. The note claims that the Pathankot attack, exactly a week later, was revenge for the hanging of Kashmiri Afzal Guru, who was convicted of planning the attack on parliament in 2001.
"The NationaI Investigating Agency ( NIA) has been asked to share all evidence gathered during the investigations with the visiting Pakistani team," a top government official told NDTV on the condition of anonymity.
After the attack, Mr Sharif pledged his assistance to India, and configured a team that includes senior military officers to examine the evidence shared by India. Some of the submissions have been rejected by Pakistan -for example, it says phone numbers that were called by the terrorists before they launched their attack are not of Pakistani handlers, as india claims, because they aren't registered within Pakistan. But Islamabad also ordered the raiding and sealing of several offices of the terror group Jaish-e-Mohammed, which India blames for the attack.