Islamabad, Sept. 7: Pakistani prosecutors on Tuesday filed a petition in a Rawalpindi-based anti-terrorism court seeking the formation of a commission to visit India to record the testimony of 24 key witnesses in the Mumbai attacks case, including lone surviving attacker Ajmal Kasab.
The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) special prosecutor, Mr Chaudhry Zulfiqar Ali, said that the petition was filed in the anti-terrorism court of Judge Malik Mohammad Akram Awan, who is conducting the trial of Lashkar-e-Tayyaba operations commander Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi and six other Pakistani suspects charged with involvement in the attacks.
The prosecution said the commission was necessary to record the testimony of key witnesses who are in India, including Kasab, terror suspect Fahim Ansari, the magistrate who recorded Kasab’s confession, a senior police officer and doctors who conducted autopsies of the 166 victims of the Mumbai attacks. The petition was filed under Sections 505, 506, 507 and 508 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. The prosecution proposed that a representative of lawyers defending the accused should be made part of the commission so that he could cross-examine the witnesses in India.