There appears to be a twist to the Hafiz Saeed tale, which has so far been about India supplying the needed proof to nail his role as a prime mover in the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, but Pakistan treating this as “literature”, rather than “evidence” — to quote the colourful language of Pakistan foreign secretary Salman Bashir — and refusing to put him away on that basis.
When the Pakistan Supreme Court threw out the case against the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba fou-nder, saying the evidence was not good enough, foreign secretary Nirupama Rao expressed “disappointment” and said all Indians would be disappointed.
The foreign secretary urged the Pakistan government to be sensitive to Indian concerns and do more.
However, top-level sources, who declined to be identified, appeared to give the benefit of the doubt to the Pakistan judiciary.
“We seem to be in the habit of passing on to Islamabad whatever the (intelligence) agencies are able to put together, without vetting it for its evidentiary value. This is the old Dawood Ibrahim syndrome, when L.K. Advani was home minister. Then we went to the extent of staking India-Pakistan relations on Pakistan handing Dawood over to us on the basis of the so-called evidence we supplied.”
They noted that the external affairs minister and the Prime Minister had maintained that in the interest of good neighbourly relations Pakistan should not allow Mr Saeed to roam free as he was in the habit of inciting people to attack India, but these leaders had not staked their reputation on the evidence value of the dossiers on Mr Saeed given to Islamabad.