The Indian response to Pakistan's queries on 26/11 attack got drowned amidst the crescendo of the chaos and pandemonium prevailing in the country due to the lawyers' long march and "sit-in". India had made a major hullabaloo regarding Pakistan's involvement in the Mumbai attack and presented a dossier of "evidence" to support its accusations. Pakistan conducted its own inquiry and admitted that some planning for the attack may have been carried out in Pakistan, however to arrive at explicit conclusions, Pakistan submitted a set of questions and had asked India to handover the response by March 13 citing legal issues related to the detention of the six Mumbai attack suspects in Pakistan. In its questionnaire, Pakistan had asked a range of queries ranging from DNA samples, postmortem reports and fingerprints of all the Mumbai attack terrorists to the forensic analysis of the Thuraya phone and other phones used by the 10 terrorists who carried out the attacks. It also sought details of the interrogation of two Indian nationals who were arrested for providing mobile phone SIMs to the terrorists. The response to Pakistan' questions was contained in a 401-page dossier that was handed over by Indian the Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon to Pakistan's High Commissioner to India Shahid Malik. According to Indian media, quoting sources, the response is "comprehensive and detailed" and includes CDs of the intercepted voice recordings of the conversation between the Mumbai attack terrorists and their handlers, Abu Hamza and Kahfa. The response also includes fingerprints of the terrorists and the other detail that Pakistan wanted. However, India did not provide the text of Ajmal Kasab's confession and has conveniently sidestepped the additional query from Pakistan: "The eye witness account of Jugdev, the only survivor boarding the vehicle of ATS Chief Mr Hemant Karkare, accompanied by two other senior police officers in the same vehicle namely Mr Salasker and Mr Kamteis required to be examined by investigators in Pakistan. It is necessary as Mr Karkare was investigating the cases against militants in mass scale killings of Muslims in India including Lieutenant Colonel Prasad Shrikant Prohit, reportedly involved in Samjhota Express incident. Linkages between diamond merchant firm Surat, Gujarat and some Hindus in Pakistan need to be clarified as the diamond merchant was alleged to sponsor Malegaon blasts through Colonel Prohit." "We expect Pakistan to prosecute and punish the accused. It is a comprehensive document supported by documentary evidence," said Home Minister P Chidambaram, who handed over the dossier to External Affairs Minister Shri Pranab Mukherjee. Pakistan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs is passing on the Indian response to its Ministry of Interior, which will examine the relevance of Chidambaram's response to the ongoing inquiry. For the moment, the Ministry of Interior has its hands full, trying to quell the lawyers' movement, but will perhaps now be able to devote time to it after the long march has been called off. Meanwhile, Interpol has announced that it is in touch with Mumbai Police to procure the legal warrants against the accused involved in the terrorist attacks. On the basis of the warrants, Interpol will issue the red corner notices against the alleged masterminds, including Pakistan-based militant outfit Lashkar-i-Taiba's chief Zakiur Rahman Lakhvi. An Interpol red notice is issued at the request of a country's law enforcement authority when a criminal evades arrest and escapes from the country. Interpol's role is to assist the national police forces in identifying or locating those persons with a view to their arrest and extradition. India has already shared evidence of the Mumbai terror attacks last November with the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) through a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty with the United States. Interpol officials have praised Pakistan's efforts to find the plotters but chided India for not sharing the information with them. "India has shared information with the FBI; they have kept Interpol largely out of the loop. So far, we have received no information from the government of India or any (Indian) police organisation," Interpol chief Donald Noble told the media in Islamabad. Last week Indian authorities made Muhammed Ajmal Amir alias Kasab, the only militant arrested in the Mumbai terror attacks, attend court proceedings for the first time through video-conferencing from his prison cell, according to Indian media. Kasab spoke to Judge N N Shrimangale, who posted the case for hearing to begin on March 23 at a special court set-up for the case, through video-conferencing. Kasab told the court that he wanted the 11,000 charge sheet against him to be translated in Urdu and the proceedings against him to be conducted in his mother tongue Urdu as he was not at all familiar with English and local Marathi language. Kasab is kept in a maximum security cell guarded by India's elite commando forces at the Arthur Road jail in central Mumbai. The Indian police have formally filed charge sheet against Kasab and 46 others for staging the Mumbai attacks, in which 173 people were killed and over 300 wounded. He was not brought to court when the charge sheet was filed at a magistrate court in Mumbai last month, while Faheem Ansari and Sabauddin Ahmed were present at the court. The three suspects, all said to belong to the militant group Lashkar-i-Taiba, are the only one in the hands of Indian authorities while the other accused are either killed or at large. It remains to be seen whether credible response to Pakistan's questionnaire has been provided by Mr Chidambaram or not otherwise the case will become a game of ping pong, with dossiers being hurled from one side to the other and the real perpetrators of the crime would remain at large with impunity. The writer is a political and defence analyst