Pakistan declines India request on 26/11 inquiry

Islamabad: Pakistani authorities have declined an Indian request to send an inquiry commission to interrogate LeT commander Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi and six other suspects charged with involvement in the Mumbai attacks, a media report said on Sunday. “There is no law under which we could allow the Indian investigators to grill the seven accused, who are already in judicial custody,” a senior unnamed Interior Ministry official was quoted as saying by the Dawn newspaper.
India had sent an official letter expressing its willingness to allow a Pakistani commission to visit India to interview key officials linked with the probe into the 2008 Mumbai attacks that killed 166 people.
In the same letter, it had asked Pakistan to allow its team to visit Islamabad to interrogate the seven accused.
Home minister P Chidambaram told the media on March 2that India had sent Pakistan “a request asking them if they would agree to a team from India to question the people who are suspects.” Wajid Zia, chief of the Federal Investigation Agency’s joint investigating team that probed the Mumbai incident, sent a reply to the Interior Ministry’s National Crisis Management Cell, which has forwarded it to the foreign ministry for delivery to Indian authorities. PTI