India has answered all the 30 questions posed by Pakistan over the Mumbai terror attacks dossier, said Indian Home Minister P. Chidambaram on Friday.
"All of Pakistan's 30 questions have been answered. Replies have been backed with evidence like forensic reports. If Pakistan is serious the answers provide solid base to prosecute," Chidambaram told the media.
The answers have been sent to the Minister of External Affairs which will deliver it to the Pakistani embassy here, according to Home Ministry officials.
"The Indian Home Ministry has prepared the responses to Pakistan's 30 queries on last November's Mumbai terror attacks dossier which India had sent to Islamabad as an evidence that the terror plan was hatched on Pakistani soil. The home minister today handed over the responses to the Indian External Affairs Minister, " a Home Ministry official said earlier.
Indian External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee will hand over the queries to the Pakistan's High Commissioner in Delhi to forward the responses to Islamabad, he said.
"It's now only a matter of time," he said.
Pakistan, while responding to India's dossier of evidence on Mumbai terror attacks, last month posed 30 questions on it, including the video recording of the interrogation of the only surviving terrorist caught alive, Mohammad Ajmal Amir alias Kasab, and his authenticated confessional statement to the police.
India had been awaiting the formal response ever since it gave the dossier of evidence to Pakistan, providing details about how 10 terrorists came from that country to launch strikes in Mumbai and how the attackers were in touch with their "handlers" even during the three-day engagement with security forces in India.
The dossier named some Pakistan-based people, including Lashkar- e-Taiba commander Zaki-ur Rahman Lakhvi and Zarar Shah as being among the conspirators of the Mumbai terror attacks on Nov. 26 last year, which claimed the lives of over 170 people and injured hundreds others.
Pakistan has admitted that part of the conspiracy was hatched on its soil and 10 terrorists came via sea from Karachi to Mumbai.
(Xinhua News Agency March 13, 2009)