India may ask Pak for details on army attack mastermind

SRINAGAR/NEWDELHI: India plans to invoke a 32-year-old Commonwealth pact to seek details from Pakistan about the 2018 Sunjawan army camp terror attack mastermind Mufti Waqas, a Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) militant who was killed by security forces in March this year, according to officials.

The move is also expected to help India in making a fresh appeal to the United Nations to get the JeM and its chief Maulana Masood Azhar banned under the Security Council resolution 1267. China has blocked previous moves by India seeking a ban on JeM and Azhar.

According to officials in the Union home and external affairs ministries, the relevant papers were being readied to send a request to Pakistan under the Commonwealth pact for international cooperation in criminal matters, under which commonwealth nations are bound to provide mutual legal assistance on such issues, they said.

The agreement was originally adopted by Commonwealth law ministers at their meeting at Harare in Zimbabwe in 1986. Citing this pact, India will seek details from Pakistan about Mufti Waqas, who was killed in an encounter in March this year with security forces at Awantipura in South Kashmir, the officials said. The details include phone numbers dialled by Waqas before and after the terror attack on the Sunjawan Army camp on February 10 in which six soldiers, one civilian and three terrorists were killed.

Citing amendments made to the Harare agreement during the meeting of law ministers in 2011 at Sydney in Australia, India will, if necessary, also seek details of the recording of statements of possible witnesses through video calls, they said.

In 2011, Commonwealth law ministers adopted amendments to the Harare pact envisaging cooperation in some new provisions that related to the interception of telecommunications and postal items, covert electronic surveillance, use of live video links in the course of investigations and judicial procedures and asset recovery.

Waqas, a Pakistani national who had infiltrated into the Kashmir Valley in 2017, was the operational commander of JeM. Besides being the mastermind of the Sunjawan Army camp attack, Waqas was also behind the suicide attack on a CRPF camp in South Kashmir’s Lethpora on the intervening night of December 30 and December 31 last year.

THE MOVE IS EXPECTED TO HELP INDIA IN MAKING FRESH APPEAL TO UN TO GET JEM AND ITS CHIEF MASOOD AZHAR BANNED