Islamabad: Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi is likely to be released from prison on Saturday, a day after a Pakistani court declared the detention orders of the alleged mastermind of the 2008 Mumbai attack as illegal.
The court's order to release Lakhvi immediately triggered strong reaction from India which summoned the Pakistan envoy in New Delhi to convey its outrage.
Raja Rizwan Abbasi, counsel for Lakhvi, had told a news agency yesterday that he would submit the court's order to the administration of the Adiala Jail Rawalpindi for the release of his client.
Jail authorities had later refused to release Lakhvi merely on basis of the court order "received through fax".
However, reports today claimed that Lakhvi (believed to be a close relative of Laskhar-e-Toiba founder and Jamat-ud-Dawa chief Hafiz Saeed) can walk out of prison today.
In a statement, India's External Affairs Ministry said that if a person, who is also a designated international terrorist by the United Nations, is released, it will pose a threat that cannot be ignored.
The Pakistani government had taken Lakhvi and six other suspects into custody in February 2009 over charges of "facilitating" the Mumbai terror attack and since then they were in jail.
The Islamabad High Court on December 29 last year suspended the detention order but this was restored later. The court, however, on Friday declared Lakhvi's detention orders illegal and ordered his immediate release.
There was outrage in India.
The issue figured in Parliament and the government summoned Pakistan High Commissioner Abdul Basit to the External Affairs Ministry in South Block.
Lakhvi is accused of masterminding the Mumbai terror attack in November 2008 in which 166 people, many of them foreigners, were killed and hundreds others wounded.
(With Agency inputs)
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