As a part of an ongoing secret dialogue between the two nations, India's National Security Advisor Ajit Doval confronted his counterpart, Lieutenant-General Nasser Khan Janjua, in a telephonic conversation with evidence challenging Islamabad’s claims to be unable to locate terrorists involved in last year’s attack on the Pathankot Air Force base.
Citing highly placed sources, a report in the Indian Express stated that the conversations saw Doval press Janjua for the arrest of the suspects, who Pakistani investigators had earlier claimed they were unable to locate.
"The NSA’s decision to press Islamabad on the Pathankot case was driven not so much by any hope of action, but to test Islamabad’s intent under the changed circumstances," the source told the newspaper.
Punjab had witnessed two terror attacks in 2015 and 2016.
In the first attack, three heavily-armed terrorists wearing army fatigues, had stormed a police station in Dinanagar town of Gurdaspur district in July 2015 killing seven persons, including a Superintendent of Police, before they were gunned down during a day-long operation.
In the second attack, four terrorists who had sneaked in from across the border, attacked the Pathankot air base on the intervening night of January 1 and 2 last year, claiming the lives of seven security personnel.
The newspaper further claimed quoting sources that even after Islamabad has held Jaish-e-Muhammad chief Masood Azhar under protective custody since January, Pakistan’s intelligence services had released at least half-a-dozen individuals held in the wake of the Pathankot attack without charge.
The India-Pakistan NSA-level dialogue began at a meeting in Bangkok on December 6, 2015, where the two men met along with Foreign Secretaries S Jaishankar and Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry.
