Pak unresponsive on 26/11 commission: Chidambaram

Home minister P Chidambaram today said the government has not received "any positive indication" from Pakistan on sending a commission in order to question the 26/11 terror attack accused.

Home minister P Chidambaram on Wednesday said the government has not received "any positive indication" from Pakistan on sending a commission in order to question the 26/11 terror attack accused.

HT Image

"They (Pakistan) have not given in-principle agreement to send our committee or commission," Chidambaram told reporters in New Delhi.

When asked about any time frame for the visit of an Indian commission to Pakistan, he said, "That is a suggestion that is put forward. That they should reciprocate by receiving our team. We have not got any positive indication on that yet. We do not have affirmative response on that yet."

During the home secretary level talks held in New Delhi in March, India agreed to a Pakistani proposal to host a judicial commission to take statements of additional chief metropolitan magistrate R V Sawant Waghule and investigating officer Ramesh Mahale, who recorded the confessional statement of Ajmal Amir Kasab, the lone surviving terrorist of the 26/11 attack, to pursue the case there.

It also wanted to take the statement of the doctor who carried out the postmortem of the terrorists that died during the attack.

Islamabad has maintained that it is necessary to send the commission to India as part of the judicial process of the case in Pakistan and promised at the home secretary level talks that they would do so by May 15.

However, nothing has been heard from Islamabad on the proposed judicial commission's visit to India.

Pakistan's contention is that the charges against the seven Lashkar-e-Taiba operatives, including its operation commander Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, lodged in a jail there are based on Kasab's statement in Mumbai and hence the magistrate and the IO's statements were necessary to submit before the anti-terror court there.