During External Affairs Minister >Sushma Swaraj’s visit last week, Pakistan may have assured India that steps were being taken to expedite the early conclusion of the Mumbai attacks trial. But the investigation done by the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) has glaring gaps, a Union Home Ministry official has said.
A government report says the FIA has not dealt with at least 22 key areas in the 26/11 case. The agency has filed a charge sheet against 27 accused. Seven of them have been in judicial custody and 20 declared proclaimed offenders.
One of the most important aspects flagged by India was that the role of the facilitators of the 10 Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terrorists who launched the attacks have not been investigated. “The FIA needs to identify the facilitators who arranged the stay, training and movement of the 10 terrorists from Lahore to Karachi [from where they left Pakistan by sea to enter India],” a government official said.
The official said the FIA had not investigated at least six new suspects — Nussar Javed, Abu Saeed, Saeed Engineer, Abu Anas, Abu Dujana and Abu Quhafa — whose names cropped up during Indian investigations. India says the conspiracy to commit terrorist acts had been on from 2005 to 2008, whereas the FIA investigated just those during 2007-08.
India had asked Pakistan to >examine Faiza Outalha , the ex-wife of David Coleman Headley, a Pakistani of American origin and one of the key conspirators of the 26/11 attacks. India said if Outalha, a Moroccan citizen, was quizzed, it would have helped the FIA get evidence against Jamaat-ud-Dawa chief Hafiz Saeed, who planned the attack, in consultation with LeT leader Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, and monitored the progress of training of the terrorists.
A senior government official said that “recce of targets done by Headley and handled by ISI officials Major Iqbal and Major Sameer was an important part of the conspiracy, which had not been investigated yet”.
The official said the FIA investigated only the Karachi part of the conspiracy, when the conspiracy, training and motivation of the LeT module took place in Muzzafarabad, Muridke and Lahore.
Further, setting up of a control room in Karachi, from where the 10 terrorists were guided during the attacks, had not been investigated.
