Citing legal hurdles, Islamabad has formally communicated to New Delhi that it will not be able to part with voice samples of the Mumbai attack accused. This is a setback to Indian efforts to find out whether one of its own nationals was present in the 26/11 mission control room, directing the Lashkar-e-Toiba gunmen.
Official sources said Pakistan high commissioner Shahid Malik personally communicated to officials of the ministry of external affairs on August 25 that defence lawyers of the 26/11 accused, including Lashkar?s Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, Zarar Shah and Abu Al Qama, have objected to recording of voice samples of their clients and the transfer of these samples to India.
Pakistan interior minister Rehman Malik had told home minister P Chidambaram, when he visited Islamabad in June, that there would be no problem in sharing voice samples with India. But last week, Malik said even the Pakistani courts were not in favour of taking voice samples.
After the foreign secretary-level talks in February, New Delhi had asked for voice samples of Lakhvi, Zarar Shah, Abu Al Qama, Shahid Jamil Riaz, Hamad Amin Sadiq, Yunus Anjum and Jamil Ahmed. Riaz, Anjum and Jamil were involved in arranging finances for the 26/11 attack. Hamad paid for the purchase of a Yamaha motor for the dinghy which landed the gunmen in Mumbai.
Ajmal Kasab, the lone surviving Lashkar gunman, had identified the voices of Lakhvi, Zarar Shah, Sajid Mir alias Wasi Bhai and Abu Jindal aka Jindal Bhai in a communication intercept recorded during the attack. Kasab had also indicated that Jindal could be of Indian origin.
This led Indian agencies to speculate that Jindal could either be Syed Zabiuddin Ansari, born in Beed and accused in the 2006 Aurangabad arms haul, or Hyderabad-born Mohammed Abdul Aziz aka Gidda who fought alongside Islamists in Bosnia, Grozny and Chechnya in the 1990s. Both Zabiuddin Ansari and Gidda figure in the Indian dossier on ?terrorists based in Pakistan involved in cases in India? which was handed to Islamabad during the foreign secretary-level talks.