Centre suspects Jaish-e-Mohammed role behind attacks in Gurdaspur, Samba and Kathua

NEW DELHI: The Centre believes that the Pakistan-based terrorist organisation Jaish-e-Mohammed, which is suspected to have carried out the Pathankot attack, was also behind the attacks last year in Gurdaspur in Punjab and Samba and Kathua in Jammu.

Besides striking similarities in the modus operandi in all these attacks, each strike was executed exactly 17 days after a peace overture between India and Pakistan. This has led experts in government to conclude that about two weeks of planning and two-three days of execution could have preceded the attacks, with JeM being the weapon of choice.

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While the strike in Samba and Kathua in March last year came after the foreign secretary’s trip to Islamabad as part of his SAARC yatra, the strike in Gurdaspur happened after the prime ministers of India and Pakistan had a cordial meeting in Ufa in Russia. Similarly, the Pathankot attack came 17 days after foreign minister Sushma Swaraj visited Islamabad on December 14-15 and advocated that the two countries should not be provoked by saboteurs who want to stop the dialogue process.