Prosecutors failed to provide evidence on Lakhvi: lawyer

Rezaul H Laskar
Islamabad, Oct 5 (PTI) Pakistani prosecutors have
failed to provide "concrete evidence" linking LeT commander
Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi to the 2008 Mumbai attacks even after a
lapse of nearly two years since the terrorist assault, one of
the lawyers defending Lakhvi has said.
The Federal Investigation Agency, which probed the
Mumbai attacks and arrested Lakhvi, has "failed to furnish
concrete evidence against" him, lawyer Shahbaz Ahmed Janjua
told the media in Rawalpindi on Monday.
Janjua claimed the anti-terrorism court conducting the
trial of Lakhvi and six others accused of involvement in the
Mumbai incident had rejected four applications filed by FIA
and the FIA is "now wasting the court's precious time by
submitting another application just to prolong the hearing".
The FIA has not handed over the statements of Indian
doctors who conducted the autopsies of victims of the Mumbai
attacks and treated the injured, he claimed.
Janjua further claimed that the FIA has not presented
a record of persons who were arrested in India in connection
with the incident.
"On our request, the court has ordered FIA to produce
the said documents on the next hearing," he said.
Janjua said it was "very strange" that the crime had
been committed in India while the trial was being conducted in
Pakistan.
The next hearing of the Mumbai attacks case by the
Rawalpindi-based anti-terrorism court is scheduled for October
16.
Lakhvi and the other suspects, most of them operatives
of the banned LeT, have been charged with planning and
facilitating the attacks in India's financial hub that killed
166 people in November 2008. PTI