Amid Covid, Pakistan told to cross-examine 26/11 witnesses through VC

New Delhi: With the 26/11 trial hanging fire in Pakistan for nearly a decade over cross-examination of 23 witnesses, New Delhi last month asked Islamabad to consider going through the exercise through videoconference since it’s now an acceptable format for recording evidence in the light of the Covid-19 pandemic.

India also told Pakistan that if physical examination was still necessary, then it was prepared to accept the visit of another judicial commission to meet the witnesses.

Sources told ET that the conversation occurred when India strongly raised the issue of slow 26/11 trial with Pakistan late last month. Islamabad’s position has been that its anti-terror court wants physical examination of 23 eyewitnesses.


While India has said on several occasions that it’s willing to extend full cooperation in the matter, sending witnesses to Pakistan was not possible. The legal team of the terror accused has used this impasse to stall the trial process.

India is clear that these legal arguments are just excuses and that Pakistan has no intent to proceed in the matter, which was evident when the case was moved from a regular Rawalpindi court to an anti-terror court in Islamabad where hearings are in-camera and not open to the public. As a result, it became difficult to get independent updates on the hearings.

While Jamaat-ud-Dawa chief Hafiz Saeed is now under arrest, the charges have nothing to do with the 26/11 attacks. The mastermind, Zaki-urrehman Lakhvi, was released from a Rawalpindi prison a few years ago.

Pakistan had sent a judicial commission in 2012 and 2013, but those reports failed to move the process forward. When it comes to examining witnesses via video-conference, Pakistani authorities have always sought to question its legal validity. But with legal protocols changing following the pandemic, India has once again pushed the envelope.