New Delhi, Nov 4: Pakistan today informed India that its judicial commission, which will interview key persons linked to the probe into the Mumbai terror attacks, will visit here soon and asked New Delhi to provide “certain details” relating to the case.
Pakistan High Commissioner to India Shahid Malik met Home Minister P Chidambaram and conveyed to him that the Government of Pakistan will be soon sending the Judicial Commission to carry forward the process of bringing the conspirators of 26/11 attack into justice.
“I came to inform the Minister that the Government of Pakistan will be sending the Judicial Commission to carry the process forward and I have mentioned that to the Minister. We will formally be informing the Indian government shortly,” he told reporters after the meeting.
Malik said dates of the proposed visit were yet to be finalised.
The Pakistan judicial commission is to take the statements of Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate R V Sawant Waghule and Investigating Officer Ramesh Mahale, who have recorded the confessional statement of Kasab, the lone surviving terrorist of the 26/11 attacks, to pursue the case there.
It also wanted to take the statement of the doctor who carried out the post mortem of the terrorists killed during the attack.
“The Government of India has been informed. The Home Minister has been informed by me that we will be sending a Commission. Now it is the Indian government to give us certain details,” he said without elaborating.
During the Home Secretary-level talks held here in March, India agreed to a Pakistani proposal to host a judicial commission of that country.
Islamabad has been maintaining that it is necessary to send the commission to India as part of the judicial process of the case in Pakistan and promised at the talks that they would do so by May 15.
Asked how soon the Commission will visit India, the Pakistan envoy said, “I cannot put a date to it. Now the process has started. So, I am sure it will take place soon. At the moment, I have come to inform the Home Minister that we have decided to send a Commission”.
The Pakistan Interior Minister, during his meeting with Home Minister P Chidambaram on the sidelines of a SAARC meeting in Thimphu in July, had “affirmed that his ministry was working toward an early visit of a judicial commission from Pakistan to India”.
Pakistan's contention is that the charges against the seven LeT operatives, including its ‘operation commander' Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, lodged in a jail there, are based on Kasab's statement in Mumbai and hence the magistrate and the IO's statements are necessary to submit before the anti-terror court in that country.
The trial in the Rawalpindi court has been going on at a very slow pace and the Indian officials are not so optimistic that the guilty will be punished any time soon. Curiously, four judges of the court have been changed ever since the trial began in early 2009. Shahid Rafique is the fifth judge to hear the case since the proceedings began.
