The statement of Pakistan high commissioner to India Abdul Basit on terrorist mastermind Hafiz Saeed can leave us in little doubt that the scope for normality to be restored in bilateral relations has shrunk precipitately. Answering questions at a forum in New Delhi on Monday, the high commissioner said Mr Saeed had been exonerated by the courts, and since there were no cases pending against him, he was free to roam anywhere in Pakistan.
The exoneration of the founder and presiding deity of Lashkar-e-Tayyaba is indeed news here. Does this mean that the Pakistan judicial system has let him off even in the Mumbai attacks case which has so agitated India? New Delhi needs to clarify this. If this is true, when did this happen? Is the Government of India surprised by the news and by the tenor in which it was communicated by Mr Basit?
Saeed has lately been touring the border areas, a clear sign that the flood disaster will be taken advantage of to infiltrate terrorist elements into Jammu and Kashmir. This has come in the wake of assertions by Islamabad that negate bilateralism in ties and the revival of the obsolete UN mechanism. The recently elected government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi kicked off with investing conspicuously in re-starting the dialogue process with Pakistan. It seems it wasn’t alive to the inner political dynamics within Pakistan that inhibit the process of normalising ties, and has been surprised by the turn of events.
