Pahalgam suspects’ sketches bear no resemblance with pictures released earlier

ISLAMABAD: The Indian Investigation Agency (NIA) has shared a picture of four armed young men in Jammu, portraying them as suspects of Pahalgam incident of April 22 but they have no similarity with the sketches earlier issued by the Indian government.

Ashok Swain, a distinguished Indian intellectual, has maintained that Indians were told that these four so-called “terrorists” were involved in Pahalgam incident for which India attacked Pakistan but had to suffer defeat.

According to Ashok, the NIA now says these four were not involved in Pahalgam incident. “If India’s own agencies don’t trust Modi, how will the world trust him?”. The leading Indian daily Indian Express has also pointed out that “all three Pahalgam attackers from Pakistan” were different from those whose sketches were released initially by the occupied Kashmir police as per the NIA probe.

The observers are of the view that Indians are cooking up some new story to create situation that could give birth to new tension with Pakistan. According to Indian media reports, the NIA has claimed that it has nabbed two people Pervez Ahmad Jothar and Bashir Ahmad, who allegedly provided shelter to the suspects which are still at large.

The agency has claimed that the so-called Pahalgam attackers were from Pakistan and they were associated with Lashkar-e-Tayba (LeT) without providing any evidence on this count.

A Jammu court on Monday granted the NIA a five-day remand of the two suspects arrested earlier in connection with the Pahalgam attack. According to the officials, the two suspects were arrested for allegedly harbouring terrorists involved in the Pahalgam incident that left 26 tourists dead.

Earlier, on Sunday, People’s Democratic Party (PDP) leader Iltija Mufti had said that tourism had been halted in Pahalgam, “crippling” the economy of occupied Jammu and Kashmir due to Pehalgam incident.