21.1.09

India to give 2nd dossier to Pakistan

Having given a truncated dossier to Pakistan the first time around, India is preparing to give a second round of information on the Mumbai attacks to Islamabad. The document, which is expected to take forward the dossier given to Pakistan on January 5, will be another push to Pakistan’s government to take steps to close the terror shop. However, India is clear that it will not give a DNA sample of the captured terrorist Ajmal Amir Kasab to Pakistan unless it specifically asks to match it with his father. Kasab’s family has not been seen in the Faridkot village after media and securitymen descended on it, in a flurry of interest soon after the attacks. The first document that was given to Pakistan was deliberately incomplete — in fact, other countries were given a more comprehensive document than the one given to Pakistan. This meant that other countries knew more about the kind of evidence India had than Pakistan. The second document is, in many ways, an amplification of the first. Sources said the second dossier contained excruciating details of the kind of communications made between Pakistan and India during the attacks. The numbers used, the VoIP records, the routes etc are all amplified in the second document. The terrorists were sent to Mumbai from Karachi by boat. After the first dossier was given, the US, for a while served as a medium of communication between India and Pakistan on the kind of steps Pakistan was going to take. A lot of how Pakistan has acted since has been at the instance of the US. What tipped the scales was a surprise visit by US vice-president designate Joe Biden to Islamabad. Sources said, during his visit, days before the inauguration, Biden told Pakistan’s leadership that the new US administration would insist on Pakistan acting on India’s demands. Biden reportedly also held out the prospect that aid to Pakistan would be “conditioned” by its behaviour on the war on terror. But over the past days, Pakistan and India have resumed direct contact with each other. This has seen India’s envoy, Satyabrata Pal being regularly briefed by the Pakistan government on the steps being taken. That this is creating pressure is clear. Not only is the military-intelligence establishment desperately unhappy, which is clear from Pakistan’s return demand for the Samjhauta Express blast suspects, reports are now surfacing about Zaki-ur Rehman Lakhvi’s disillusionment at being left to face the rap, while other Jamaat-ud-Dawa leaders are virtually off the hook. It may be this dissatisfaction, said sources, that is leading him to open up to investigators.

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