RAWALPINDI-
Authorities have detained Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, the man accused of masterminding the 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai, under Maintenance of Public Order (MPO) a day after an anti-terrorism court granted him bail.
The court order drew swift condemnation from New Delhi, which urged the Pakistani government to appeal.
Pakistani government will be challenging the court order granting him bail.
“I am completing all the legal formalities and then I will challenge this order in Islamabad on Monday,” government prosecutor Mohammad Azhar Chaudhry told a foreign news agency.
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 LeT.
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 came 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.