islamabad - The alleged mastermind of Mumbai attacks Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi and six other suspects have challenged before the Islamabad High Court the legality of a judicial commission that travelled to India in 2013 to probe the attacks.
A division bench of IHC comprising Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui and Justice Mohsin Akhtar Kayani conducted hearing of the petition moved by Lakhvi’s counsel Raja Rizwan Abbasi Advocate challenging the proceedings of the judicial commission that travelled to Mumbai to record the statements of four Indian prosecution witnesses.
However, no proceedings were held in this matter on Friday and the court adjourned the hearing of the petition till the first week of October.
A Pakistani panel comprising special prosecutors and the defence counsel had visited Mumbai in 2013 to record the statements from prosecution witnesses, including Magistrate RV Sawant Waghule, who recorded the confessional statement of Ajmal Kasab, Ramesh Mahale, the chief investigation officer of the case, Ganesh Dhunraj and Chintaman Mohite, the two doctors who had conducted the post-mortem of the terrorists killed during the attack. The commission in 2012 had recorded the statement of these witnesses but had not cross-examined them.
Lakhvi’s lawyer has filed the plea saying that the commission that went to India had not been allowed to cross-examine four key Indian witnesses.
Operational commander of banned outfit Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT) Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, Hamad Amin Sadiq, Shahid Jameel Riaz, Jamil Ahmed, Younis Anjum Abdul Wajid and Mazhar Iqbal have been charged with planning and executing the Mumbai attack in November 2008 that left 166 people dead. The case has been pending since 2009.
