Rattled Pakistan refuses to accept terror charges after NIA exposes Pulwama attack plot

Even as Pakistan's role in the 2019 Pulwama terror attack has been exposed a number of times, including the recent chargesheet by National Investigation Agency (NIA), the Imran Khan-ruled country has blatantly rejected the charges. In a statement on Wednesday, Pakistan's Foreign Office claimed that India's chargesheet is a 'mischievous attempt’ to implicate Islamabad and has been filed keeping in view 'domestic political interests'. Moreover, rattled Pakistan also recounted its 'peace gesture' in releasing IAF Wing Commander Abhinandan even though it was due to India's exemplary diplomatic pressure that Pakistan was forced to release India's hero who had shot down a PAF F-16.

Pakistan's statement 

The statement said: "At the outset, Pakistan had rejected India’s baseless allegations and expressed readiness to extend cooperation on the basis of any actionable information. India failed to provide any credible evidence for its invective and has instead been using the attack for its malicious propaganda campaign against Pakistan."

"Pakistan categorically rejects the so-called ‘charge sheet’ by India’s National Investigation Agency (NIA), which mischievously attempts to implicate Pakistan in the Pulwama attack in the Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu & Kashmir (IIOJK) last year. The fabrications in the reported ‘charge sheet’ are patently designed to further the BJP’s anti-Pakistan rhetoric and its narrow domestic political interests."

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NIA chargesheet

The NIA has filed a 13,500-page charge sheet naming several Pakistani nationals, including key conspirator Masood Azhar Alvi, as accused in the case. Others named in the charge sheet include Pakistani nationals Rouf Asgar Alvi, Ammar Alvi, Mohd Ismail, Mohd Kamran Ali, and Qari Yasir. According to NIA, the terror attack was a plot hatched by the Jaish, with assistance from Islamabad, to project the attack as the handiwork of terrorists operating in Kashmir.

Out of the 19 names in the chargesheet, seven are said to be in NIA's custody, another seven are said to have been encountered by the forces, and five are said to be in Pakistan. The seven JeM operatives under NIA's custody include Mohammad Abbas Rather, Tariq Ahmad Shah, Mohammad Iqbal Rather,  Shakir Bashir Magrey, Waiz-ul-Islam, Insha Jan, and Bilal Ahmed Kuchey.

On July 5, the NIA made the 7th arrest in the Pulwama terror attack case.  The arrested individual – Bilal Ahmed Kuchey – who runs a sawmill has been accused of harbouring and extending support to the Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorists involved in the attack. Kuchey introduced the terrorists to other Over Ground Workers who provided them safe houses during the planning of the attack. 

The agency has also recovered a Pakistan National Identity Card from one of the 19 terrorists named in the chargesheet, Muhammad Umar Farooq, who has been killed by security forces. The Computerised National Identity Card (CNIC) is an identity card issued by the Pakistan government and is available to any citizen that is 18 years. It is an equivalent India's Aadhaar Card.

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Pulwama terror attack

At around 3 pm on February 14, 2019, a Jaish-e-Mohammad terrorist drove an explosive-laden SUV into a convoy of vehicles carrying CRPF personnel on the Srinagar-Jammu national highway in South Kashmir’s Pulwama district. This resulted in the killing of 40 CRPF personnel. Around 80 kg of explosives were used for the attack.

According to NIA sources, Pakistan used Adil Ahmad Dar, a local resident who rammed an explosive-laden car into a CRPF convoy in Pulwama, as a suicide bomber to project the attack as a result of a home-grown militancy against “India’s occupation of Kashmir”. Around 12 days after the terror attack, in the wee hours of February 26, Indian Air Force (IAF) jets had bombed the JeM camp in Balakot, in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province as a retaliation to the cowardly attack. 

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