New Delhi, September 03: Carring on the “dossier” diplomacy with Pakistan, India has now told Islamabad that it will have to send a letter rogatory if it wants answers relating to Lashkar-e-Toiba operative David Coleman Headley’s visits to India between 2006 and 2009. Pakistan had recently raised 47 questions related to Headley in response to the last dossier sent by India.
A letter rogatory — or letter of request — is a formal written communication sent by a court in one country to another foreign court requesting judicial assistance. The National Investigation Agency’s case against Headley, his Canadian co-accused Tahawwur Hussain Rana and others is currently on in a designated special court in New Delhi.
Pakistan has already sent a letter rogatory to India, asking it to send 26/11 Mumbai attacks’ lone surviving terrorist Ajmal Amir Kasab to Pakistan. India declined the request on the ground that judicial processes relating to Kasab’s trial were still pending in India since Kasab was already in the process of filing an appeal against his conviction. Hence India was in no position to send Kasab to testify in a Pakistan court.
In its latest communication to Pakistan on September 1, New Delhi, sources said, has provided some very basic details about Headley. Islamabad, however, has been told in no uncertain terms that it will have to go through the letter rogatory route if it wanted details on the places Headley visited, the people he came in contact with, what those people have told the Indian agencies and whether he was under any kind of surveillance by the Indian security agencies.
Through a note verbale, Pakistan’s Interior Ministry had sent a list of 47 questions to the Ministry of Home Affairs seeking exhaustive details of Headley’s nine trips to India in a four-year period. The questions also sought many details on what all he revealed to the NIA when the agency questioned him in the United States in June.
On November 11, 2009, the NIA had booked Headley, Rana and unnamed others for entering into a criminal conspiracy with members of LeT and HUJI to commit terrorist acts in New Delhi and other places in India. The case was registered under various sections of the Indian Penal Code, the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act and the SAARC Convention (Suppression of Terrorism) Act, 1993. The case against the accused is currently on in the court of District and Sessions Judge S P Garg in New Delhi.
——–Agencies