LAHORE – India has agreed in principle to allow an investigating team from Pakistan to question Mumbai witnesses of the 2008 terror attack, Home minister P Chidambaram said on Tuesday, but added that Pakistan was yet to reply in kind regarding India’s request of questioning people accused of conspiring and helping the terrorist execute the attack.
“We have agreed that they should come to India to record the evidence (about the Mumbai attack),” Chidambaram told reporters, “but we have also sent them a request asking them if they would agree to a team from India to question the people who are suspects,” he said.
“In principle, we have agreed to allow a Pakistani investigating officer, a magistrate and a doctor to study post-mortem reports (of nine Pakistani terrorists killed in Mumbai),” the minister said. Chidambaram said Pakistan had been told that documentary evidence related to the investigations into the case could be obtained from the Bombay High Court.
The permission to Pakistanis to record evidence comes amid fears that the prime accused in the case, Laskhar-e-Tayyaba’s Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, could get relief from court because a judicial commission failed to visit India. But Islamabad has insisted that investigators wanted to record statements of Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate RV Sawant Waghule and investigating officer Ramesh Mahale.
The two officials had recorded the statements of Ajmal Kasab – the lone terrorist captured alive.
