ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Thursday said it had scrutinised a dossier handed over by India in the wake of a suicide attack last month and concluded that the accusations that Pakistani groups were involved or there were militant training camps in Pakistan were unsubstantiated.
At least 40 Indian paratroopers were killed when a suicide bomber attacked a convoy on February 14 at Pulwama in Indian-controlled Kashmir. Pakistan-based militant group Jaish-e- Mohammad (JeM) claimed the attack, which pushed India and Pakistan to the brink of war as they exchanged airstrikes and fought brief dogfights.
Last month, India handed over to Pakistan a dossier of what it said was evidence that linked Pakistan to the Pulwama attack.
At a news briefing on Thursday, Dr Mohammad Faisal, the foreign office spokesman, said the Indian dossier listed 90 Pakistanis suspected of belonging to banned organisations with militant links and 22 locations of alleged militant training camps.
“While 54 detained individuals are being investigated, no details linking them to Pulwama have been found so far,” Faisal said. “Similarly, the 22 pin locations shared by India have been examined. No such camps exist.”
The spokesman said Pakistan was willing to allow visits to the locations of the alleged training camps if India requested it but “additional information and documents from India would be essential to continue the process of investigations.”
Answering journalists’ questions, the spokesman said Pakistan was “ready to cooperate [with India] and if they have any actionable intelligence that would sustain and clear the threshold of a Pakistani court, we are ready to work on that.”
He also said “the dossier does not claim any linkage of Masood Azhar,” the head of the JeM group that India blames for the Pulwama attack, to the suicide attack itself.
