Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, the mastermind of the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks, was on Thursday sent back to a Rawalpindi jail after a court in Islamabad remanded him to 14 days judicial custody for the abduction of an Afghan national.
Lakhvi, 54, was produced before a judicial magistrate of a local court in Islamabad on the expiry of his two-day physical remand.
The magistrate rejected the police request for further five days remand to interrogate the suspect and sent him on judicial custody for 14 days at Adiala Jail where had been detained in Mumbai terror attacks case for the last five years or so. He will be produced before the court again on January 15.
Just before Lakhvi was to be on Tuesday after Islamabad High Court suspended his detention, he was arrested on charges of kidnapping a man named Muhammad Anwar Khan, an Afghan national.
In a FIR registered on Monday at a police station in Islamabad, Mr. Khan was kidnapped by Lakhvi six years ago.
The police also got Lakhvi’s two-day physical remand which ended on Thursday.
Lakhvi was granted bail on December 18 in the Mumbai attacks case but was detained under the Maintenance of Public Order (MPO). He challenged his detention under MPO in the Islamabad High Court which on Monday suspended the government order, evoking a strong reaction from India.
According to the FIR against Lakhvi, Mr. Khan went missing from Islamabad’s Thallan Syedan suburb some six years ago.
Mr. Khan’s brother-in-law Muhammad Daud accused Lakhvi for the kidnapping.
According to the FIR, Lakhvi motivated Mr. Khan for Jihad, but he refused. One day Lakhvi came along with his accomplices at his house and took Mr. Khan with him.
Mr. Daud told police that he tried several times to contact Lakhvi after his arrest in 2009 but without success.
“Only after learning from television news that Lakhvi is going to be released, and thinking he may go underground, I requested the Islamabad police to take action against the accused for kidnapping Khan,” he said.
Lakhvi and other six accused — Abdul Wajid, Mazhar Iqbal, Hamad Amin Sadiq, Shahid Jameel Riaz, Jamil Ahmed and Younis Anjum — have been charged with planning and executing the Mumbai attacks that took place on November 26, 2008, and left 166 people dead.
Lakhvi was arrested in December 2008 and was indicted along with the six others on November 25, 2009 in connection with the case. The trial has been underway since 2009.
Lakhvi bail challenged in Pakistan Supreme Court
Earlier in the day, the Pakistan government moved the Supreme Court against the Islamabad High Court’s order suspending Lakhvi’s detention under a public security order.
“The Interior Ministry on Thursday challenged the Islamabad High Court’s order to suspend the Mumbai attack accused’s detention in the Supreme Court,” a Pakistan Interior Ministry official told PTI .
The government has made a plea that the release of Lakhvi could cause law and order situation in the country as the IHC had “ignored” this very fact, he said.
“The IHC’s order to suspend Lakhvi’s detention under Maintenance of Public Order (MPO) has weak legal grounds,” the official said.
Lakhvi’s counsel Raja Rizwan Abbasi told PTI he would defend the Islamabad High Court’s order after receiving notice from the Supreme Court in the case.
“We will defend the IHC’s order as the government does not have a strong case,” he said.
The Islamabad High Court on Monday had ordered the conditional release of Lakhvi, asking him to deposit a security bond of Pakistani Rs. 1 million and appear in person in every hearing of the Mumbai attack case.
A day after the High Court approved Lakhvi’s release, he was arrested in an abduction case and a judicial magistrate in Islamabad sent him to two days police remand on charges of kidnapping.
