Making a significant headway in the investigations into the terror attack at the Army camp in Jammu and Kashmir’s Uri, probe agencies have been able to identify one of the four slain terrorists as Hafiz Ahmed from Dharbang, Muzaffarabad in Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK). '
Two handlers involved in the ghastly attack that claimed 18 Indian lives have been identified as Mohammad Kabir Awan and Basharat.
Proof establishing the cross-border origins of Uri attacks were today handed over to Pakistan High Commissioner Abdul Basit by Indian Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar, Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Vikas Swarup said.
The National Investigation Agency, which is probing the attack, has also taken two people into custody. The duo was arrested over the suspicion of helping terrorists infiltrate into the Indian side.
These guides, who were apprehended by local villagers, have been indetified as Faizal Hussain Awan (20 yrs, S/O Gul Akbar, R/O Potha Jahangir, Muzzaffarabad) and Yasin Khurshid (19 yrs, S/O Mohammed Khurshid R/O Khiliana Kalan, Muzzaffarabad).
During his interrogation, Awan has deposed to the NIA that they had "guided and facilitated" the border crossing of the group that perpetrated the September 18 Uri massacre.
In another incident on September 23, 2016, one Pakistani national, Abdul Qayoom, R/o Sialkot was apprehended in Molu sector opposite Pakistan's Sialkot sector and has confessed to undergoing three weeks of training with the terrorist group LeT and donating substantial funds to Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation, their front organization.
Diplomatic tensions between India and Pakistan have been rising since the September 18 attack on army base in Uri.
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj in her address at the UN General Assembly on Tuesday said there are nations "in our midst" where UN designated terrorists roam freely and deliver "their poisonous sermons of hate with impunity", an apparent reference to Mumbai attack mastermind and Jamaat-ud-Dawa chief Hafiz Saeed.
She also made a strong pitch for isolating such nations who speak the language of terrorism and for whom sheltering terrorists has become "their calling card".
Pakistan High Commissioner Abdul Basit was today summoned by Indian Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar and was handed over these evidences.
"We are willing to provide the Pakistan High Commission consular access to these three individuals apprehended in connection with terrorist attacks in India," the Foreign Secretary told the Pakistani envoy.
Basit was also told that these apprehensions and subsequent interrogation underline the cross-border infiltration that had been the subject of their previous discussion.
"We would once again strongly urge the Government of Pakistan to take seriously its commitment not to allow terrorist attacks against India from its soil and territory under its control. Continuing cross-border terrorist attacks
from Pakistan against India are unacceptable," Jaishankar asserted.
This is the second time since the attack on September 18 that the Pakistani envoy has been summoned over the terror strike which India maintains was carried out by Pakistan-based terror groups.
New Delhi has already offered to provide Pakistan with fingerprints and DNA samples of terrorists killed in Uri and Poonch, if that country wished to investigate these cross-border attacks.
