The crackdown follows the arrest this week of several members of the teror group, including Jaish chief, Maulana Masood Azhar. (File Photo)
Pakistani authorities have shut down several religious schools run by the Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorist group accused of masterminding an attack this month on the Pathakot air base, the provincial law minister said on Friday.
The crackdown in Punjab province, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's power base and the headquarters of Jaish-e-Mohammad, follows the arrest this week of several members of the militant group, including its leader, Maulana Masood Azhar, who was released by India in 1999 in exchange for 176 passengers who had been hijacked on an Indian Airlines planes.
"Officials of the Counter-Terrorism Department raided the Jamiatul Nur seminary in the Daska area on Thursday and arrested more than a dozen people," Rana Sanaullah, the law minister of the Punjab province where Jaish-e-Mohammad is headquartered, told Reuters.
"The seminary has been sealed off and documents and literature have been confiscated from the premises."
Sanaullah said several other offices and seminaries run by Jaish-e-Mohammed had also been raided and shut down, with many of its staff arrested. He declined to share further details.
In a TV interview on Thursday, Mr Sanaullah confirmed that Azhar had been taken into "protective custody" and said legal action would be taken against him if his involvement in the Pathankot attack was proved "beyond doubt."
India has demanded that Pakistan take action against the group and on Thursday announced that the two countries would reschedule talks between their foreign secretaries while the investigation into the air base attack was carried out.
Azhar is the mastermind of the 2001 attack on the parliament in Delhi in which nine Indians were shot dead.