It was a simple question to a politician, asked without expectation of a proper reply, but Pakistan’s interior minister Rehman Malik knocked the stuffing out of every Pakistani in earshot with his reply.
And that included Pakistan’s high commissioner to India, Shahid Malik.
Emerging from delegation-level talks between Prime Ministers Manmohan Singh and Yousaf Raza Gilani, the interior minister was bantering with a group of journalists when this correspondent suddenly asked: “What do you personally think of Mr Kasab?”
“He is a terrorist and should be hanged!” said the minister without batting an eyelid.
No Pakistani of any rank had said this before.
Then the floodgate of questions opened, and Mr Malik didn’t disappoint.
He said a Pakistani judicial commission would soon visit India for three or four days, and then the case against all 26/11 accused would become watertight.
Asked if the case against them would then soon be wrapped up in the courts, he said he couldn’t say about judicial processes, and recalled that Hafiz Saeed, Jamatud Dawa (JuD) chief and spiritual guru of the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, had been released under the instruction of Pakistan’s highest court.
Asked why JuD hadn’t been declared a terrorist outfit in Pakistan after the UN called it that, Mr Malik said: “It’s a question of evidence.”