New Delhi: Amid reports that Pakistan was planning to ban 10 terror outfits, including 26/11 mastermind Hafiz Saeed-led Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), India has expressed doubts that the move would be fruitful.
Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh Saturday said Pakistan had banned many organisations earlier as well but “the same organisations start working again using some other name”.
Singh stressed that Pakistan must not allow any terrorist organisation, by any name, to function.
Reports had earlier this week claimed that Pakistan plans to ban 10 terror organisations, including JuD and the dreaded Afghan-based Haqqani Network. The move, if it materialises, is being seen by experts as a “paradigm shift” in the country’s security policy in the wake of Peshawar school massacre.
The move came after the US declared the fugitive chief of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan Mullah Fazlullah as a ‘Specially Designated Global Terrorist’ following Secretary of State John Kerry’s visit to Pakistan this week.
A formal announcement to this effect would be made in “coming days”, The Express Tribune had reported, citing official sources.
A ban on JuD will be a significant development as India, as well as the US, have long considered JuD as a front for the Lashkar-e-Toiba terror outfit involved in the 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai that left 166 people dead.
The UN Security Council designated the JuD a front for the LeT after the Mumbai attacks. Since then, the UN and US have sanctioned several JuD leaders.
The Haqqani network, founded by Jalaluddin Haqqani, has been blamed for the Indian embassy bombing in Kabul in 2008 that left 58 people dead, a 2011 attack on the US embassy in Kabul, and several big truck bombing attempts in Afghanistan.
US and Afghan officials have repeatedly said Pakistan’s spy agency ISI covertly backed the Haqqanis to extend its influence in Afghanistan, a charge Islamabad deny. The group was designated as a terrorist organisation by the United States in September 2012.
Pakistan’s government and opposition parties have approved a wide-ranging National Action Plan against terrorism after Peshawar school attack that left 150 people dead, mostly students, in December.
(With PTI inputs)
