Prime Minister Narendra Modi making a statement in the Lok Sabha on Friday
Prime Minister Narendra Modi today said in Parliament that India has "strongly conveyed" to Pakistan its opposition to bail for Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, the Lashkar-e-Taiba commander who plotted the 2008 terror attack on Mumbai, in which 166 people were killed.
PM Modi said in a statement in the Lok Sabha that India had felt pain no less than Pakistan's over the ghastly terror attack on a school in Peshawar this week and bail for the 26/11 conspirator was a big shock.
He said External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj would make a detailed statement in Parliament in Monday.
Today Ms Swaraj said, "It's hard to believe there is lack of evidence against Lakhvi. We demand that Pakistan reverse this decision. We are keeping an eye on this issue."
The Lok Sabha also passed a resolution moved by all parties condemning the grant of bail to 26/11 accused Lakhvi by Pakistan court.
This morning, a Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson said that Pakistan has been informed of "the sentiments across the spectrum of Indian society that that this will make a mockery of Pakistan's commitment to fight terror groups without hesitation and without making distinctions." He referred to the "glacial pace" of the trial of Lakhvi, 54, who was arrested in 2009 along with six other terrorists charged with helping to plot and execute India's worst-ever terror strike.
On Thursday, an anti-terror court in Islamabad granted bail to Lakhvi citing lack of adequate evidence against him. India has pointed out that it has furnished material that includes voice samples of Lakhvi's phone instructions to the ten terrorists who sailed into Mumbai in 2008 on how to strike the city's biggest landmarks. Ajmal Kasab, the lone terrorist to have been caught alive after the siege, later told Indian investigators that Lakhvi was the mastermind of the attacks, along with Hafiz Saeed, the founder of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, a terror group banned by Pakistan but tacitly supported by its army. Saeed is a free man in Pakistan.
For now Lakhvi remains in hail under a special legal provision called the Maintenance of Public Order. The Pakistan government has said it will appeal in the Supreme Court against the bail order, which came two days after Taliban gunmen killed 132 children in a Peshawar school and the country's Prime Minster Nawaz Sharif vowed to root out terror.