Pakistan talks put off, Islamabad can’t confirm Jaish chief Masood Azhar

India and Pakistan said Thursday they have postponed talks after a fatal attack on an Indian air base that New Delhi blames on a banned Pakistan-based group.

Swarup welcomed the arrests and said India would work with a team of investigators Pakistan is sending to Pathankot, near the border between the two countries.

Seven soldiers were martyred in the Pathankot terror attack.

“We have taken Maulana Azhar and his fellows under protective custody in connection with the Pathankot incident”.

He said the foreign secretaries of the neighbours spoke on the telephone and made a decision to defer the talks that had been tentatively scheduled for Friday in Islamabad.

“Islamic literature was also recovered from these madrassas, investigations are on going”, he said, adding that a dozen suspects had been detained and are being questioned by police. A senior official of Pakistan’s elite security agency told this TOI on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to speak publicly.

Mohammad Zubair, a minister in the Nawaz Sharif government in Pakistan, told an Indian TV channel that he can not confirm the arrest of Azhar while Lt General (Retired) Abdul Qadir Baloch, minister for frontier regions, said that “Azhar was arrested”. Rana Sanaullah, the minister for law in the eastern Punjab province, says Azhar is in the custody of the Counter-Terrorism Department but that so far no case against him has been registered, a requirement under Pakistani law that precedes an indictment. “It doesn’t amount to presumption of guilt or arrest”. The stand was taken by the Indian government as well. All 178 passengers and 11 crew were on board were released in Afghanistan. In 2002, former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf outlawed Azhar’s militant group as part of the global anti-terror campaign.