Ibn-e-Rehmat Taking a cue from 9/11, the Indians invented a story to sully Pakistans image by trumpeting up the Mumbai sham show, time and again. A cooked-up report designed to implicate the Pakistan government in the Mumbai incident appeared in the Indian Express on August, 23, 2010. It contained excerpts from the interrogation of Mr David Coleman Headley that was done by a team of Indian Investigation Agency (NIA) during June 3-9, 2010, at Chicago, USA, for nearly 35 hours. According to this report, Mr Ahmed Shuja Pasha, ISIs chief, visited Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi of the Lashkar-i-Taiba (LeT) in Adiala jail, Rawalpindi, after 26/11. The investigation, according to the report, revealed that two to three attackers would infiltrate in India from Nepal or Bangladesh for a similar action and that the ISI paid around Rs 2.5 million to the LeT bigwigs to purchase a boat in 2008 that was later dismantled after the September incident. During the last couple of years, Pakistani analysts have been highlighting different aspects of the Indian side of story, with the sole objective of bringing home to the domestic reader and international community New Delhis nefarious attempt at procuring evidence, howsoever untenable, to blame Pakistan. If we closely look at the details, it is more than a figment of Indias imagination. The purpose behind is to inject the venom of disinformation into the minds of young readers. To gauge how well this piece of disinformation would have been received, we must keep in mind that the Indian subcontinent was once known for its fairy tales, ghost stories and witchcraft. It has always been a region on this planet riddled with all sort of mysteries, enigmas and puzzles. Every time a foreigner first set foot on its soil, he realises the puerile and gullible nature of its people. They are either too simple and easily beguiled or too crook and able to quickly fabricate stories to deceive others. Reality, however, cannot be changed with any amount of falsehood. And controversies and ambiguities are cousins and offspring of lies. Ground realities would tell a different story. An officer who is heading one of the worlds premier intelligence agency would never like to visit a jail premises, roughly 40 kilometres from the agencys headquarters, that too in a crowded and congested place, as it would take quite a time to reach there in the heavy traffic. If he wanted to meet him, he would have summoned Mr Lakhvi to his office. An agencys head of this stature has enough resources and say to call a prisoner to his office without much difficulty. And above all, Mr Lakhvi does not enjoy that status and expertise which may convince Mr Pasha to take the trouble of personally visiting to seek any input, if the LeT (as claimed by the Indian newspaper) is working under ISI umbrella. If the Indian interrogators succeeded in squeezing such information from Mr Headley in June 2010, why then it took nearly two months to make it public. Again, who told Mr Headley that ISI paid such a hefty amount to the LeT operative for the purchase of a boat, whereas Pakistan navy could have easily arranged one? And finally, if India had been facilitated to interrogate Mr Headley, why Pakistan (being a stakeholder) was not asked to participate in it? If such disclosures were made through the media, why were they not shared with Pakistan officially through diplomatic channels? What if, the Indian side continues to release such stories in bits and pieces, as part of its disinformation campaign in future as well? Indian Express is one of the newspapers that is widely read and carries a name in the international circles. Publication of such baseless reports may spoil its reputation. At the same time, both Indian and Pakistani Foreign Offices should mutually decide to avoid printing such reports which not only spoil the mutual relationship, but also cast their shadow on the political temperature of the region. The writer is a freelance columnist.