BJP parliamentary party chairman L.K. Advani on Sunday said just as Pakistan kept lying to the US on Osama bin Laden’s whereabouts, it has been telling “white lie” to India on the issue of underworld don Dawood Ibrahim.
On the Laden’s issue, Mr Advani wrote “If Zardari had said that he personally was unaware about Osama’s hideout, the statement may have been digestible. But that the Army Chief and the Inter-Services Intelligence did not know about this is a patent falsehood.”
Writing on the issue in his blog, Mr Advani said Laden’s hideout in the garrison town of Abbottabad in Pakistan was constructed when former President Parvez Musharraf was “in total command of the situation” in Pakistan.
He said when Mr Musharraf came for the Agra summit in 2001, he told them “a white lie” about Dawood when his extradition sought.
Mr Advani wrote: “It was the same kind of lie that the Pakistanis have been feeding to Americans all these years about Osama.”
Recalling former Pakistan President’s first visit to India on the invitation of then Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, the senior BJP leader said Musharaff’s face “suddenly turned red and unfriendly” when Dawood’s extradition was demanded and he “replied assertively” that “Dawood Ibrahim is not in Pakistan”.
“Later, one of the Pakistani officials who was present during the meeting, said to me, ‘What our President said about Dawood Ibrahim on that day was a white lie,” Mr Advani said recalling the conversation between him and Musharraf at Rashtrapati Bhavan on July 14, 2001.
Mr Advani, who was the then home minister, said Musharraf’s first response was positive when he suggested an extradition treaty between India and Pakistan.
But, the situation got suddenly changed when India demanded the handing over of Dawood, prime accused in the 1993 Mumbai serial bomb blasts case and “who lives in Karachi”, even before both the nations conclude a formal extradition treaty.