lakhvi challenges detention under abduction case in Pak

Mumbai attack mastermind Zakiur Rehman lakhvi, who has been remanded to police custody in an abduction case, today challenged his detention on charges of kidnapping in a Pakistani court.

"lakhvi has filed an application in the district and sessions court against implicating him in a false and fabricated FIR," lakhvi's counsel Raja Rizwan Abbasi told PTI.

"The FIR has (a) ghost character (abducted person) as well as carrying a concocted story to keep my client behind the bars," he said, alleging that the government had done so under India's pressure.

Just before lakhvi was to be released yesterday, he was arrested on charges of kidnapping a man named Muhammad Anwar Khan, an Afghan national. In a FIR registered on Monday at a police station in Islamabad, Anwar said he was kidnapped by lakhvi six years ago.

The police also got lakhvi's two-day physical remand from a judicial magistrate.

lakhvi, 54, was granted bail on December 18 in the Mumbai attack case but was detained under the Maintenance of Public Order (MPO). He challenged his detention under MPO in the Islamabad High Court which on Monday suspended the government order, evoking a strong reaction from India.

lakhvi is being kept under high security at the Shalimar Police Station here. He will be produced before the court tomorrow in the kidnapping case.

A Pakistan interior ministry official told PTI that the police would seek his further physical remand.

"The police will seek extension to his remand for at least one week," the official said.

According to the FIR against lakhvi, Khan went missing from Islamabad's Thallan Syedan suburb some six years ago.

Khan's brother-in-law Muhammad Daud accused lakhvi for being behind the kidnapping.

"Anwar used to visit the Jamaat-ud-Dawah (JuD) office Bhara Kahu where the group motivated him about Jihad and lakhvi asked Anwar to get ready for it (Jihad), but he refused. One day lakhvi came along with his accomplices at his house and took Anwar with him," the FIR said.

Daud told police that he tried several times to contact lakhvi after his arrest in 2009 but without success.

"Only after learning from television news that lakhvi is going to be released, and thinking he may go underground, I requested the Islamabad police to take action against the accused for kidnapping Anwer," he said.

lakhvi and other six accused - Abdul Wajid, Mazhar Iqbal, Hamad Amin Sadiq, Shahid Jameel Riaz, Jamil Ahmed and Younis Anjum -- have been charged with planning and executing the Mumbai attack that took place on November 26, 2008, and left 166 people dead.

lakhvi was arrested in December 2008 and was indicted along with the six others on November 25, 2009 in connection with the case. The trial has been underway since 2009.