The Pakistan Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the earlier judgment of the Lahore HC to set Lashkar-e-Tayyaba founder Hafiz Saeed free from preventive detention was unlikely to come in the way of foreign secretary Nirupama Rao’s proposed June-end trip to Islamabad and external affairs minister S.M. Krishna’s trip to Pakistan in
July, a well-placed Foreign Office source said, adding that these visits appeared to be on course so far. He noted as a precaution, however, that anything could suddenly change in India-Pakistan relations.
Asked if the Pakistan government had deliberately presented a weak case on Mr Saeed, sources in the MEA said India did not know enough about the matter to comment. When PM Manmohan Singh bro-ke the ice with his Pakistan counterpart Yousaf Raza Gilani in Thimphu last month, the two leaders had mandated their ministers to meet at an early date to take the discussions forward.