The decision of the Lahore High Court to release Lashkar-e-Taiba commander Zaki ur Rehman Lakhvi from detention was not surprising considering that he had already been granted bail by an anti-terrorism court in December. The Pakistan state has, since the terror attacks in Peshawar in the same period last year, sought to convey a sudden urge to undo the earlier faux pas of granting Lakhvi bail, and contested it. Yet prosecutors failed to mount a proper case, arguing for Lakhvi’s detention only on the issue of “maintenance of public order”. Without a clear-cut case built by prosecutors on charges of engaging in terrorism, it was always a matter of when Lakhvi would be released rather than if. The Indian authorities had marshalled pages of evidence showing the role Lakhvi had played as a controller of the terrorists who attacked Mumbai on November 26, 2008. Apart from audio tapes and transcripts showing his involvement, the testimony of U.S. citizen David Headley who had done reconnaissance in Mumbai before the attacks, and confessions by the captured terrorist Ajmal Kasab were also made available to Pakistan. That these were not properly used to build a case against Lakhvi suggests the laxity and hypocrisy of the Pakistani state. The poor prosecution effort was compounded by witness and judge intimidation. The still-unsolved assassination of special prosecutor Chaudhury Zulfiqar Ali in May 2013 also affected it.
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