ISLAMABAD: A civil judge gave Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, the alleged mastermind of the Mumbai terror attacks, in police custody on Tuesday for two days in a six-year-old ‘kidnapping’ case, when the man was awaiting his release as the Islamabad High Court (IHC) had suspended his detention order overnight.

Civil judge Malik Aman has directed the police to produce Lakhvi before him on January 1, 2015.

India has relentlessly sought Lakhvi since the November 2008 attacks killed over 160 persons, including several foreigners, causing international uproar and a diplomatic storm.

Lakhvi, 54, was reportedly arrested soon after the attacks from the headquarters of the banned Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) militant group in Muzaffarabad. He is being tried in a Anti-Terrorism Court (ATC) on charges of training terrorists and facilitating the Mumbai terror attacks, filed by a Special Investigation Unit of Federal Investigation Agency, since 2009.

Civil judge remands Lakhvi to police for two days on kidnapping charge

On December 18, 2014, the ATC ordered his release on bail. But the federal government slammed him in jail for 30 days under the Maintenance of Public Order (MPO) law and seemingly set a legal crisis in motion.

Lakhvi challenged his detention under the MPO in the IHC where Justice Noorul Haq N Qureshi suspended the detention order on Monday (December 29). He was expected to be released the same evening after furnishing a Rs1 million bond that he would be available for the ATC trial.

His relatives, reporters and TV cameras gathered outside Adiala Jail in Rawalpindi for the event but waited till late in the night only to be told that Lakhvi may be released on Tuesday.

However, the next morning Islamabad police surprised everyone by taking Lakhvi to civil judge Malik Aman, seeking and getting his custody in remand for two days in connection with a kidnapping reported by an Afghan national some six years ago. But police registered his First Information Report (FIR) at 8:40pm on Monday.

Complainant Mohammad Daud claims his brother-in-law Anwar Khan went missing from Islamabad’s Thallan Syedan suburb and alleges that Lakhvi kidnapped him.

Police sources quoted Daud stating in the FIR that Anwar used to visit the Jamatud Dawa’s (JuD) office Bhara Kahu where the group ingrained their teaching about Jihad on him; and that Lakhvi asked him to permit Anwar to go for Jihad but he refused.

One day Lakhvi turned up with some other persons at his house, Daud says, and took Anwar with them, assuring that he would return by the evening.

Daud, who lives in Sector G-14 and runs a junkyard, claims that he tried several times to contact Lakhvi after his arrest in 2009 but without success.

Only after learning from television news that Lakhvi is going to be released, and thinking he may go underground, Daud says he requested the police to take action against the accused.

And the police obliged him.

Daud claims that Lakhvi sent him threats from jail that his brother-in-law would be killed if he approached the police and lodged complaint over his kidnapping.

After obtaining his physical remand from the civil court, police shifted Lakhvi from Adiala Jail to the lockup of the Shalimar police station, according to police sources.

Despite several attempts, no senior police officer was available for comments on Daud and his FIR.

Published in Dawn, December 31st, 2014