ISLAMABAD: A day after the Islamabad High Court (IHC) suspended his detention order, Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, the alleged mastermind of the 2008 Mumbai terror siege, was arrested on Tuesday in a kidnapping case.
Lakhvi was granted bail on December 18 by an anti-terrorism court but was immediately detained by the Islamabad administration under Section 3 of the Maintenance of Public Order. Subsequently, he challenged his detention in the IHC, which on Monday granted him conditional bail against surety bonds of Rs1 million.
Hours after he was released from the high-security Adiala jail on Tuesday, Lakhvi was arrested by the capital police for his alleged involvement in a kidnapping case registered with the Golra police station. Shortly after his arrest, he was presented before a duty magistrate who sent him on a two-day physical remand.
The complainant in the case, Muhammad Dawood, alleged that Lakhvi had tried to convince him to send his brother-in-law, Anwar Khan, for Jihad in 2008. “However, when he refused, Lakhvi and his accomplices came to his place and took Khan along and since then he has been missing,” he stated in the FIR.
Interestingly, the complainant had not reported to the police when the incident took place. Justifying the delay, he alleged that Lakhvi had threatened that he would kill Anwar if he registered a case.
After the registration of the FIR, Lakhvi was brought to the court under extraordinary security where his lawyer, Rizwan Abbasi, opposed a physical remand of his client, saying it was surprising that the FIR of an alleged abduction was lodged more than six year after the incident.
“It is not written anywhere in the FIR that Anwar Khan was forcibly picked up,” he argued. “Wherever he [Anwar Khan] went, he went on his own choosing,” the lawyer said, adding that Lakhvi was arrested in a concocted case
However, the judge didn’t buy the argument sent Lakhvi on a two-day physical remand and directed the police to present him before the court on January 1, 2015. India on Monday angrily reacted to the suspension of Lakhvi’s detention and summoned Pakistan’s envoy in New Delhi to convey its ‘strong concern’ over the ‘lack of effective action’ by Pakistan’s prosecuting authorities. A senior security official said Lakhvi has been arrested under Indian pressure. “Authorities in Pakistan have decided to keep Lakhvi in custody,” he told The Express Tribune on condition of anonymity.
Lakhvi, the commander of proscribed militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) was allegedly involved in planning, financing and executing the November 26, 2008 attacks on Mumbai’s landmarks that had killed over 160 people.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 31st, 2014.
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