File photo: Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi
Pakistan has said that Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, the 54-year-old mastermind of the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai, will remain in jail for three months, while it challenges the bail granted to him yesterday by a court.
India has expressed its outrage clearly to Pakistan over the bail order, Prime Minister Narendra Modi told Parliament today. Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj said that the bail makes "a mockery of Pakistan's commitment to fight terror."
Pakistan has said it will appeal to its Supreme Court against the bail order, which was granted on the basis that not enough evidence has been furnished in court to prove Lakhvi's involvement in the worst-ever terror attack in India. The Pakistani government will keep him in custody through a legal provision, the Maintenance of Public Order, used earlier to detain terrorists granted bail.
"Lakhvi was to be freed this morning...but the government detained him there for three months under the 16 MPO," Prosecution Chief Chaudhry Azhar told the Press Trust of India. He said the decision had been conveyed to India.
166 people were killed in 2008 after ten terrorists from Pakistan sailed into Mumbai. The only terrorist caught alive, Ajmal Kasab, told investigators that the siege was meticulously planned and executed by Lakhvi and Hafiz Saeed, the founder of the Lashkar-e-Taiba,a group which is supported by Pakistan army despite a ban. Saeed holds rallies frequently where he spews abuse against India. This week, as the Taliban killed nearly 130 children in an army-run school in Peshawar, he was on television channels blaming India for the massacre and vowing revenge.
India has repeatedly urged Pakistan to speed up the trial of Lakhvi and six others who were arrested in 2009 for the Mumbai attacks. India has handed over evidence including voice samples that reveal Lakhvi directing Kasab and the other terrorists as they moved through Mumbai, striking at some of its most famous landmarks. Kasab was hanged in a jail in Pune in November 2012.