ISLAMABAD-
An anti-terrorism court on Thursday granted bail to Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, the man accused of masterminding the 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai.
Lakhvi has been directed to pay surety bonds worth Rs500,000 before his release.
“We had moved a bail application with the Islamabad anti-terror court on December 10, today the judge granted bail to my client after hearing arguments from both sides,” Lakhvi’s lawyer Rizwan Abbasi told a foreign news agency.
Prosecutor Mohammad Chaudhry Azhar confirmed the court had granted bail.
Lakhvi is a commander of banned militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and is the key suspect in planning Mumbai attack on 26 November, 2008.
The 60-hour siege on India’s economic capital left 166 people dead and was blamed on the banned militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba.
Relations between the two nuclear-armed rivals worsened dramatically after the carnage in Mumbai, in which 10 gunmen attacked luxury hotels, a popular cafe, a train station and a Jewish centre.
Pakistan has had five Mumbai suspects in custody for more than five years and the failure to advance their trials has been a source of particular irritation in perennially-frosty ties with India.
The court’s decision comes a day after Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif vowed to crack down on terror groups in Pakistan, after Taliban gunmen massacred 148 people at a school.