NIA sends letters to Pak asking Pathankot leads

The National Investigation Agency, which is probing the terror attack on Pathankot IAF airbase in January, has sent Letters Rogatory to Pakistan seeking details of four Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) militants who, according to investigators, had carried out the attack.

The NIA sent the Letters Rogatory, a legal document, through the special court asking details about the Pakistani phone numbers dialed by the four terrorists before carrying out the strike at the airbase of Indian Air Force on the intervening night of 1 and 2 January.

The letter has been sent ahead of the visit of Pakistani Special Investigating Team (SIT), which is likely to take place in the last week of March. 

In a related development, officials investigating the attack have stated that no terrorists were present at a building inside the compound for which the elite National Security Guards spent 48 hours in clearing the building.

The NIA is officially tight-lipped on the issue, saying it was awaiting forensic report from CFSL Chandigarh. But sources privy to the development said that no human remains or ammunition have been found from the building which was extensively searched by sleuths of NIA and central intelligence agencies after the encounter ended .

Initially,  after the security personnel had killed four terrorists, the NSG, which was rattled by the death of its officer Lt Col Niranjan EK, had claimed that gunfire was coming from a building  and there were two more terrorists present in the building, following which it took another two days to clear it.

However, no remains or traces of any kind pointing out to the presence of the two terrorists were recovered from the building  after the encounter ended.