Responding to the dossier presented by India in the aftermath of the Pulwama terror attack, Pakistan on Thursday, 28 March, shared the preliminary findings of its investigations.
Pakistan’s Foreign Office said that during the course of investigations, all aspects of the information provided by India were examined, “including the ‘confessional’ video of Adil Dar, ‘claim’ of responsibility for the attack, WhatsApp and Telegram numbers used to share videos and messages in support of Pulwama attack, list of 90 individuals suspected of belonging to a proscribed organisation and 22 pin locations of alleged training camps.”
In its response, Pakistan made two sharp claims. It said that the 54 detained individuals being investigated had no links to Pulwama.
Secondly, it claimed that the 22 pin locations shared by India had been examined and that it had found “no terror camps” there.
“Pakistan is willing to allow visits, on request, to these locations,” the response said.
This comes a day after a report by Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) claimed that publicly available satellite imagery acquired the day after IAF’s air strikes in Balakot suggests that buildings at the camp were not “visibly damaged or destroyed”.
Another striking claim made by the report was that, as per the high-resolution images, all three weapon strikes missed their intended targets by similar distances.
This, the authors’ claim, suggests that the misses were “caused by a systematic targeting error.”
The Balakot air strikes have been at the centre of a political storm in India, with several leaders of the ruling dispensation claiming that the air strikes had inflicted ‘serious damage’ on the JeM campsites, leading to anywhere from 200 to 400 casualties.
The IAF, meanwhile, has refused to disclose a head count but confirmed that “all intended targets had been hit”.
Read more about the report here.
India had handed over the Pulwama dossier to the Acting High Commissioner of Pakistan in New Delhi on 27 February with specific details of Pakistan-based terror group Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM)'s complicity in the attack, that killed 40 CRPF personnel on 14 February, and the presence of JeM terror camps and its leadership in Pakistan.
Disappointed With Pak’s Response: MEA
"India is disappointed at Pakistan’s response to our detailed dossier on the Jaish-e-Mohammed’s complicity in the cross-border terror attack in Pulwama, the presence of its terror camps and leadership in Pakistan,” the Ministry of External Affairs said in a statement on Thursday.
Regrettably, the statement added, Pakistan continues to be in denial and even refuses to acknowledge Pulwama as a terror attack.
“It has not shared details of credible action, if any, taken by it against terrorists or terrorist organisations based in territories under its control,” MEA said.
We are hardly surprised, as this identical script was followed by Pakistan in the past, after the terror attacks in Mumbai in 2008 or in Pathankot in 2016, the ministry added.
“There's no dearth of sufficient actionable information and evidence in Pakistan itself to take action against them, if there is sincerity and intent to do so,” the statement added. “Nevertheless, we are examining the paper handed over by Pakistan.”
“Pakistan should abide by the commitment it gave in 2004, and which its current leadership has recently repeated, vowing not to allow any territory under its control to be used for terrorism against India in any manner. Pakistan should take immediate, credible, irreversible and verifiable actions against terrorists and terror organisations operating from territories under its control," it added.
(With inputs from PTI)
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