Pakistani official says investigation agencies are trying to verify Masood Azhar’s links to Pathankot attack
From page A ISLAMABAD: A top Pakistani official has confirmed that Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) chief Masood Azhar has been placed in “protective custody” while investigation agencies try to verify information provided by India about his alleged links to the Pathankot attack.
Rana Sanaullah, law minister of Punjab province and a top leader of the PML-N party, made the revelation during a television talk show on Thursday night. Authorities have sealed two madrassas linked to the JeM though none of the offices of the banned group have been shuttered, he said.
“Masood Azhar has been taken into protective custody by the counter-terrorism force. This has been done so that if the information (provided by India) on the Pathankot incident is developed by our agencies, then the people connected to the incident can be arrested in that case,” he said. “So we’re holding on to (Azhar) for now, so that we can arrest him if necessary in this case,” he added.
Till now, the foreign ministries of both countries had said there was no information about the arrest or detention of Azhar.
Sanaullah, who has himself been accused of having close links to radical groups in the past, further said authorities had not sealed offices of any organisations or “caught anyone”.
“There were two madrassas — one in Bahawalpur that was being run by the brother of Masood Azhar, the chief of the banned JeM, and another in Sialkot. We have sealed them because of a suspicion of links with the JeM,” he added.
India says the six terrorists who attacked the airbase in Pathankot on January 2, killing seven security personnel, were Pakistanis linked to the JeM.
There were reports of raids in parts of Pakistan’s Punjab as the federal government continued its crackdown on the JeM.
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif reiterated his vow to fight terrorism in all its forms. He told a gathering of businessmen in Islamabad that if Pakistan did not fight against all forms of terrorism, it could not emerge as a progressive and democratic country.
NIA to conduct Punjab SP’s lie-detector test next week
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, January 15The anti-terror probe agency NIA has set into motion the legal process to get Punjab Police SP Salwinder Singh’s consent to subject him to a lie-detector test. The agency plans to conduct the test on the officer sometime next week.Sources in the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) said that even after several rounds of questioning for five consecutive days and also confronting him with his cook Madan Gopal and caretaker of Dargah Somraj, the officer — who is presently posted as Assistant Commandant with 75th Battalion of the Punjab Armed Police – made changes in his statements.Salwinder Singh, shunted out barely few days before the January 1-2 terror strike as Superintendent of Police (headquarters) of Gurdaspur and facing alleged charges of breach of discipline, has given his in-principle consent for a polygraph test, sources said.Sources said that the NIA, which has been probing the case, will move an application before a designated court here tomorrow seeking permission for conducting a polygraph test on Salwinder.His car was hijacked by terrorists before they entered the Pathankot IAF base on the intervening night of December 31 and January 1.Sources said that bringing the witnesses and accused face to face was necessary because of the “conflicting statements”. While Salwinder had told the Punjab Police he regularly visited the shrine, Somraj claimed that he had seen him for the first time hours before the terrorists launched the attack on the Pathankot facility.
Pak shuts JeM seminaries
To seek DNA, fingerprints of terrorists
LAHORE/Islamabad, Jan 15
The crackdown in Punjab province, PM Nawaz Sharif’s power base and the headquarters of Jaish-e-Mohammad, follows the arrest of several members of the militant group, including its leader, Maulana Masood Azhar.Pakistan has said it is clamping down on Azhar’s group, which India has long accused Pakistani authorities of tolerating, while it investigates Indian assertions that the January 2 attack on the Pathankot air base was the work of the Pakistan-based militants.”Officials of the Counter-Terrorism Department raided the Jamiatul Nur seminary in the Daska area on Thursday and arrested more than a dozen people,” Rana Sanaullah, Law Minister of the Punjab province where Jaish-e-Mohammad is headquartered, said.”The seminary has been sealed off and documents and literature have been confiscated from the premises,” Sanaullah said.Meanwhile, the Joint Investigation Team set up by Pakistan to probe the Pathankot attack today decided to seek from India the DNA reports and fingerprints of the slain terrorists amid its keenness to expedite the probe, an official said. The team, headed by IG Rai Tahir of Punjab Counter-Terrorism Department, held a meeting to discuss the progress in probe. — Agencies