A leading Pakistani religious leader has asked authorities to withdraw millions of rupees provided to the Jamaat-ud Dawa as aid for its “welfare projects” as the group has links with extremists.
Expressing outrage at Thursday’s suicide attack on the Data Darbar shrine in Lahore, Sunni Tehrik leader Haji Hanif Tayyab said banned groups were being allowed to work under new names.
He demanded that the government should make public details about the funding of these groups.
Tayyab, a former federal minister, said: “The JuD has links with extremists and the government has given the group millions of rupees at the behest of the US and this funding must be withdrawn”.
The Punjab government was at the centre of a controversy recently after official documents showed it had provided over Rs 82 million to the group and its allied organisations in the budget for 2009-10.
Officials claimed the funds were meant for JuD’s educational and welfare projects that were taken over by the provincial government in the wake of the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks.
India has accused the JuD and its chief Hafiz Mohammed Saeed of masterminding the 2008 Mumbai attacks. Tayyab said the same elements that attacked Rehman Baba’s shrine in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province in 2009 were involved in the suicide bombing of Data Darbar.
He alleged the Punjab government had concealed details of a cache of arms that was recently seized in the Raiwind area of Lahore. He further alleged that some elements in the electronic media were delivering provocative speeches against mausoleums of saints.
These elements should be taken to task and an FIR should be registered against them, he said.
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India won’t send Kasab to Pak, court told
REZAUL H. LASKAR
ISLAMABAD
Juy 3: The Pakistan government on Saturday informed an anti-terror court hearing the Mumbai attack case involving LeT’s Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi and six other suspects that the latest Indian dossier on the 26/11 strikes said Ajmal Kasab could not be sent to Pakistan to testify against the accused.
A government lawyer appeared before judge Malik Mohammed Akram Awan, who is conducting the trial in the Adiala Jail in Rawalpindi for security reasons, and said India’s latest dossier had said that it would not be possible to send Kasab to Pakistan to join the court’s proceedings. The government lawyer said the anti-terrorism court could now make a request for the Indian magistrates and a police officer who had recorded Kasab’s statement to come to Pakistan to testify. The government too is looking into this matter and will make a request in this regard, the lawyer said. Saturday’s proceedings were brief as lawyers across Punjab province and other parts of Pakistan are on strike to protest against Thursday’s attack on the Data Darbar shrine in Lahore that killed 45 people. —PTI