Interior Minister Rehman Malik’s ‘romantic birthday celebrations’ in India seem to have undone several months of diplomatic efforts aimed at peace with Pakistan.
Senior opposition leader of India Yashwant Sinha was seen to hit out in the Parliament at Indian Home Minister S K Shinde for
“not responding appropriately” to Malik’s controversial remarks about 26/11 Mumbai attacks’ mastermind Hafiz Saeed and the Babri Masjid issue.
During his visit, Malik had compared the 2008 Mumbai attacks with the demolition of Babri Masjid in Ayodhya in 1992.
However, he later claimed that his statement had been misunderstood. It was also noted that despite Indian insistence that Saeed was guilty, Malik repeatedly said that Saeed had been arrested thrice in Pakistan and then let off by courts owing to lack of evidence.
The Pakistani minister’s statements had “hurt the prestige of the country”, said Sinha, who lashed out at Shinde for remaining “silent” during the visit. Furthermore, the Indian opposition leader demanded that no talks should be held with Pakistan “until the culprits of Mumbai terror attacks, prime conspirator Hafiz Saeed, were handed over to New Delhi by Islamabad”.
Shinde said he specially mentioned that “India’s investigations have shown that Hafiz Saeed was one of the masterminds of the Mumbai attacks.”
He added that Malik was “misinformed” about the actual reasons of Saeed’s earlier arrests whom India blames as the main conspirator in the 26/11 attacks. “From the papers given to us, it is clear that the detentions of Hafiz Saeed in the aforesaid cases were for other reasons and not for his role as a conspirator in the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks.”
In the Rajya Sabha opposition leader Ravi Shankar Prasad said Malik’s statements were “a deliberate design” by Pakistan not to take action against Saeed as he enjoyed “the protection of the Pakistan government”, adding that this was “very disturbing”.
“Why was he (Malik) called,” questioned Prasad, while objecting over Malik’s statements.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 18th, 2012.
COMMENTS (4)
Comments are moderated and generally will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive.
For more information, please see our Comments FAQ
At least we can now agree on something. We are ruled by fools but We the people of India and Pakistan are bigger fools to be ruled by such fools!
@Polpot: Lets trade them shall we?
A major faux pas on the part of Rahman. But he at least has confirmed what Indians have known all along, that ManMohan is an ignorant, self-important fool who can be taken for a ride by any other fool, much less the crafty ones. (That is why, he could not find even one constituency in the vast country to elect him.) Rahman also correctly surmised that ManMohan would not care to go through the sheaf of papers he was handing over because he was literally dying to visit Pakistan. It was Home Minister Shinde who went through that sheaf of papers and discovered -surprise, surprise - that Pakistani judiciary had not been even given a chance to consider the evidence provided by ManMohan's government with respect to 26/11. And, all this time Rahman was saying that India's dossiers did not come up to Pakistan's very high and sublime judicial standards, which was why he could not arrest Sayyed. Are there any Pakistanis who are embarrassed at their Interior Minister? I can assure them we Indians are shamefaced that we find ourselves powerless to replace this fool ManMohan as the head of our government! The best defense that his Foreign Minister, Salman Khursheed (the former Law Minister of India who challenged a public leader who exposed his shenanigans to come to his Farrukhabad constituency and return alive!!!) provided is that Rahman's irresponsible rants do not represent Pakistan's foreign policy, thereby keeping the increasingly vanishing prospect of ManMohan's dying wish alive!
We want t now send the Indian Home Minister to Pakistan ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Kindly just keep him there, preferably in Karachi.