Uri attack Pak students innocent, admits Indian agency

SRINAGAR/MUZAFFARABAD: India's National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Wednesday released two 'Pakistani schoolboys', who were arrested last year for their alleged involvement in the Uri attack, after nearly six months of investigations, Indian media reported.

The two school-goers, identified as Faisal Hussain Awan and Ahsan Khursheed, have been given a clean chit by the NIA and handed over to the Indian Army's 16 Corps to send them back to Pakistan, according to an NIA press statement.

The Indian agency said it found no linkages between the two Pakistani teens and the militants killed in the Uri attack. The young men had crossed the border after an altercation with their parents on the issue of their studies, the investigation revealed.

Moreover, the evidence collected from them including their statements, technical analysis of their mobile phones and GPS devices, recovered from the possession of slain militants, did not establish their linkage to the attack which left 19 soldiers dead in September, 2016.

The two boys, who lived in a village in Azad Kashmir located at an hour’s walk from the Line of Control, were picked by the Indian Army after they had strayed across the border. They were arrested on September 21, 2016, three days after the Uri attack in which unknown militants waged an attack on the Indian Army's brigade headquarters in Uri, Indian-occupied Kashmir (IoK), and left 19 Indian soldiers dead.

India, maintaining its tradition, had once again put the blame on Pakistan without even preliminary investigations held. Speaking about their arrest, their school principal Basharat Husain in Muzaffarabad had remarked that the 16-year-olds had recently graduated from class IX and were well-behaved.

The two Pakistani teenagers will be brought to Srinagar, from where they will be handed over to the Baramula police. The two boys will finally be handed over to the Pakistani authorities by Uri command force.