JOIN USA delegation of the Ministry of Home Affairs officials may visit Islamabad soon to finalise the terms of reference of the Pakistani Judicial Commission that will visit India to cross-examine four witnesses in connection with the 26/11 terrorist attacks.
Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik on Sunday said New Delhi would send the delegation to Islamabad on Tuesday. “India will send a delegation which will set the terms of reference for the second Judicial Commission to come to India. That team will come on Tuesday and I will clear it within 24 hours. If it happens in a week, ten days....probably in the first week of January, the Commission will visit India,” Malik said before leaving for Islamabad.
He also promised that the trial of the 26/11 plotters in Pakistan would proceed expeditiously after the visit of the judicial commission to India.
Malik also said that Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency, which had probed into the 26/11 conspiracy, had ‘irrefutable’ evidence against the seven Lashkar-e-Toiba operatives being tried in connection with the case at the Anti-Terrorism Court in Rawalpindi. He, however, said that though Hafiz Saeed, whom New Delhi suspected to be the brain behind 26/11, was an “irritant” for both India and Pakistan, the evidence New Delhi provided was not enough to prosecute him.
The MHA officials later declined to confirm the date of the Indian delegation’s visit to Pakistan, but maintained that it might take place very soon.
Malik was on a visit to India at the invitation of his counterpart Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde. Apart from parleys with Shinde, he also called on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and had meetings with National Security Adviser Shiv Shankar Menon and Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj. He concluded his three-day visit with a lecture at Delhi-based think-tank Observer Research Foundation.
“Once the Commission visits India, I am very hopeful that in a very short span of time, the case will be concluded. Our sincerity and will should not be doubted. We will leave no stone unturned and there will be special attention from my side,” he said.
An eight-member Pakistani judicial commission visited India in March this year and recorded statements of four witnesses in Mumbai. But the court trying the seven 26/11 plotters in Pakistan rejected the report of the judicial commission last month, pointing out that the panel was not allowed to cross-examine the witnesses in India. Pakistan later proposed to send the judicial commission to Mumbai again and asked India to give permission for cross-examination of the witnesses. New Delhi accepted the proposal.
On the demand for action against alleged 26/11 mastermind Hafiz Saeed, Malik said Islamabad had asked New Delhi to provide substantive evidence (against Saeed) which could stand the test of any court. “I tell you that I am still waiting for that (evidence),” he added.