Pakistan, Islamabad: Today, a five member Joint Investigation Team (JIT) probing the Pathankot air base attack left for New Delhi. Official sources confirmed that a team consisting of two officials from Islamabad, two officials from Lahore and one Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi official departed from the Wagah Border.

The team will travel to New Delhi where they will be joined by another official. After holding a meeting with the Pakistan High Commissioner to New Delhi, they will depart for Pathankot, the sources said. A five-member JIT was constituted by the Punjab government in February, a week after a First-Information Report (FIR) was filed by the Punjab Counter-Terrorism Department against the Pathankot attackers at a Gujranwala police station.

The Pathankot air base attack occurred just days after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi paid a ‘surprise’ visit to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on his birthday and the occasion of his granddaughter’s wedding, a move that appeared to promise better relations between the neighbouring countries in the coming year. After Modi’s visit, the Pakistani and Indian foreign secretaries were scheduled to meet to discuss modalities regarding the Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue agreed upon during Indian Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj’s visit to Islamabad for the Heart of Asia conference in December.

Earlier this month, Assistant to the Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz, after a meeting with Sushma Swaraj, had said an investigation team from Pakistan would visit India to probe the Pathankot air base attack on March 27. The visit of the Pathankot JIT comes just days before a possible meeting between Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Indian counterpart Narendra Modi at the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington.