Pakistan's clean chit to Masood Azhar embarrassment for India: Congress

New Delhi, March 31: The Congress on Thursday said Pakistan’s insistence that Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Masood Azhar was not involved in the Pathankot attack was a “major embarrassment for India”. “Pak JIT led by ISI, has given a clean chit to Masood Azhar. This is a major embarrassment for India,” the party said in a tweet. Media reports claimed that Pakistan’s Joint Investigation Team (JIT) probing the Pathankot attack told India’s tiol Investigation Agency (NIA) that it was yet to find evidence to link Masood Azhar to the terror attack. India says the Pathankot attack was planned in Pakistan and Azhar and his brother Abdul Asghar Rauf were directly linked to the attack. The NIA on Wednesday expressed hope that Islamabad will reciprocate India’s gesture of allowing a Pakistani team to visit the Indian Air Force base in Pathankot to probe the attack. NIA spokesman Sanjeev Kumar said it was “agreed” that the kind of cooperation India provided to the Pakistani team would be reciprocated. “This is the reciprocity agreed,” Kumar told reporters on Wednesday. The remarks seemed to indicate India’s intention to get similar access in Pakistan to pursue the investigation into the January 2 Pathankot attack. Home Minister Rajth Singh, while addressing election rallies in Assam, also said that Pakistan has admitted about involvement of elements in their country in the Pathankot attack and had filed FIRs. (IANS)