New Delhi: The Parliamentary standing committee on Home Affairs has questioned the Centre’s decision to allow Pakistan Joint Investigation Team (JIT) to visit the Pathankot IAF base which was attacked by JeM terrorists on January 2 earlier this year.
The panel led by Congress MP from Rajya Sabha P Bhattacharya stated that the IAF base is still ‘highly unsafe’ and called for urgent steps to fix the loopholes.
“Even today, there are very unsafe conditions at the Pathankot airbase,” he said, pointing that ‘how the terrorists managed to scale the walls and enter the attack site despite an alert by the Intelligence Bureau’.
It also questioned how Superintendent of Police Salwinder Singh and his friends were set free by terrorists.
Stressing that 'something is seriously wrong with the country's counter-terror security establishment’, the panel said that if the ‘government was serious and intelligence agencies functioned properly, the picture would've been different’.
The committee is unable to understand how terrorists managed to reach Pathankot airbase in spite of terror alerts sounded well in advance, he said.
The panel also urged the Centre to take its findings seriously and take immediate steps to check the gaps. “We urge upon the government to take this report seriously and take appropriate steps,” he added.
In the 31-member panel, the BJP has 13 members, Congress-04, BJD-02, Trinamool Congress-02, AIADMK-03, CPI-M, CPI, SP, TRS, TDP, Shiromani Akali Dal and Shiv Sena one each.
The Pathankot IAF base terror was attacked by heavily armed Pakistani terrorists on January 2 left seven security personnel dead.
