J K News Today special
Jammu
Pakistan has rejected NIA probe into the Pulwama terror attack of last year and called the charge sheet as a “ mischievous” move to implicate Pakistan has not come as a surprise It is not because of its familiar line of denials ever since the terror attack took place last year, leaving 40 CRPF men dead on highway passing through Pulwama in south Kashmir while running up to Srinagar, the capital city that was the destination of the convoy hit by a van loaded with explosives by a suicide bomber .
Reading contents of the charge sheet full of evidence about the players in the attack and the men behind them , of course, including Pakistan establishment and its so-called non-state actors, and terming all this as a “ fabrication by Pakistan Foreign Office’s statement on Wednesday evening is a template that Islamabad always uses whenever it is cornered on the terror attacks in Kashmir and elsewhere in India.
The 1340-page charge sheet filed by NIA in a special court in Jammu on Tuesday , which has all the documented evidence, physical , electronic digital , is an investigation into the terror attack of February 14, 2019 . It has names of the men involved, their backers and the geographical location and the wires that transmitted the directions and the means that helped them in logistics and executing the terror attack regarded as the worst-ever on Kashmiri soil.
It has names of the familiar terror faces, including Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Masood Azhar , his brothers , and all others who worked in the front – Adil Dar got consumed by his own madness to kill under indoctrination and radicalisation from across the border and Pakistani agents in the Valley . The fact is that Jaish-e-Mohammad is based in Pakistan , Masood Azhar operates from Pakistan , and their protectors are the men in Pakistan army and ISI . So, what is Pakistan denying that ISI doesn’t exist, or Masood Azhar never existed in blood and flesh before and after the Pulwama attack. And why was China compelled to drop its objections at the UN when Azhar was named as Global terrorist last year.
Pakistan claims that it had nothing to do with the terror attack . It needs to answer three questions – one, did it condemn the Pulwama terror attack? The answer is no. Its leaders simply said that this was an act by Kashmiri youth , why Adil Dar’s video recording that was broadcast on social media within an hour after the attack on social media say that he is from Jaish-e-Mohammad .
It also needs to address the question , if Pakistan was not involved, why did it not handover Jaish founder to the Indian investigators ? Sure enough, Pakistan could not have handed over its men to Indian investigators . It did not hand him over to India after the January 2016 terror attack at Pathankot air base even after the Pakistanis were given access to the air base to find out that how the terror attack had taken place.
Third, why should Pakistan be interested in protecting these designated these terrorists , be it Hafiz Saeed or Azhar and the likes of them . These are, what Pakistan establishment thinks , strategic assets for the country that is now known as a fertile ground for breeding terrorists . It has continued with this policy even after the terrorists created by it unleashed most gruesome attacks, including the one on school children in Peshawar in December 2014.
Former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton had delivered a stinging message to Pakistan during her visit to the country in October 2011 : “It’s like that old story – you can’t keep snakes in your backyard and expect them only to bite your neighbours. Eventually those snakes are going to turn on whoever has them in the backyard,”
But Pakistan has not learnt anything . The NIA charge sheet is an opportunity for Pakistan to prove that it has the will to fight terrorists , but unfortunately by repeating its old lines of denials and attributing motives to the investigation and its conclusion, it has committed itself to rearing of snakes
