Punjab government refuses to hand over Gurdaspur terror attack case to NIA

New Delhi: The Punjab government has refused to hand over the Gurdaspur terror attack case to National Investigation Agency (NIA) for probe, saying the state police was competent to investigate the case.

In a communication, the Punjab government told the Union Home Ministry that the state police was handling the case and the investigation was still going on, hence the case cannot be handed over to NIA.

The Punjab Police would be happy to take NIA investigators as associates in the probe, the communication said.

Home Ministry officials said that even though the NIA is empowered to take any terror-related case suo motu under the law, the central government has decided not to do it in this case and allow the Punjab Police to continue the probe.

Interestingly, the recent case related to the arrest of Pakistani terrorist Mohammad Naved Yakub in Udhampur was suo motu taken over by the NIA.

In a pre-dawn attack on July 27, the terrorists, suspected to be members of either Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) or Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), killed seven persons-- three civilians, SP (Detective) Baljit Singh and three home guards.

A Punjab Police SWAT commando team later eliminated the three terrorists after a long-drawn operation.