Islamabad: With India laying the onus on the continuation of peace talks on Pakistan's ability to act against the perpetrators of the Pathankot attack, and pressure mounting on Pakistan to act, Pakistani authorities today claimed to have carried out a number of raids at different places in connection with the case.
The raids have also led to the arrest of some suspects, intelligence officials said today. As per the officials, the raids were carried out in Gujranwala, Jhelum and Bahawalpur districts and an unspecified number of people were arrested.
"Probe has been going to ascertain if they were involved in the attack or some of them facilitated it," they said.
The arrests led Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to order a Joint Investigation Team of IB, Inter-Services Intelligence, Military Intelligence, Federal Investigation Agency and Police to thoroughly probe the Pathankot attack links to Pakistan.
The decision to form the JIT, comprising officials from Intelligence Bureau (IB), Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and Military Intelligence (MI), was taken at a high-level meeting chaired by Sharif recently, The Express Tribune said.
Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, National Security Adviser Lt-Gen (retd) Nasser Khan Janjua, Prime Minister's Adviser on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz, Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs Tariq Fatemi and Finance Minister Ishaq Dar attended the meeting.
The decision came after the leads provided by India which has linked the Foreign Secretary-level talks, scheduled for January 15, to Islamabad's decisive action on the Pathankot terror attack.
Prime Minister Sharif "is taking an active role in getting to the bottom of the Pathankot incident," a Prime Minister's House source was quoted as saying by the paper.
India has provided telephone number in Pakistan contacted by the airbase attackers and given other inputs while asking Islamabad to take punitive actions against the handlers and possible mastermind.
(With PTI inputs)
