India, Pakistan must share admissible information

Terror incidents

ISLAMABAD: Instead of blame games, Pakistan and India need to focus on strengthening the mechanism of information sharing which should be legally admissible in the courts of both the countries and mutual legal assistance laws should be strengthened so that both the neighbours could fight terrorism in a better and organised manner.

In the wake of Uri Attack, India, instead of playing war of words through media, should share legally admissible evidence with Pakistan so that, if any non-state actor is using Pakistan’s soil to disturb peace in India, could be meaningfully tried in a court. Had there been better information sharing or legal diplomacy between the two countries, no one would have hurled blames at the other after any terror attack, says international law expert, Ahmer Bilal Soofi.   “Whether it was Mumbai attack, Samjhota Express blast, Pathankot attack or Kulbhushan Yadav episode, all the cases are pending investigation before the courts and courts demand admissible evidence to convict the accused which has never been provided by either country in their respective cases”, Sufi said while talking to The News. 

He added that every terrorism case was ultimately judged and dealt with at legal grid and if one country continued to blame the other instead of providing essential legal evidence to bring the associates of terrorists to book, the accused could not be convicted in such situations.

The lawyer held that India had been blaming Pakistan for protecting the non-state actors who allegedly had been conducting terror attacks in India because those accused had not been convicted by Pakistan courts whereas the reality was that in Mumbai attack the evidence shared by India with Pakistan was not admissible in a court of law but a campaign was run in the media that a “dossier” had been handed over to Pakistan. “In such situations, it is only the accused who benefits the most and not the two states”, Sufi added.

He said that the blame hurling game on both the sides had distinguished facts as India always blamed Pakistan’s non-state actors for conducting terrorism in India while Pakistan blamed Indian state actors for terrorism in Pakistan and one of the recent examples had been of Yadav who himself had admitted being part of Indian state machinery and being on a mission to disturb Pakistan’s peace.

“Pakistan does not own non-state actors operating in India and India disowns its state actors who are caught in Pakistan,” the lawyer said.  Arjit Doval has himself admitted that he spent seven years in Pakistan as a spy meaning thereby he was part of Indian state machinery operating in Pakistan as undercover spy, says Ahmer Bilal Soofi.

“The uncertainty and suspicion prevails on both the sides of the border but the only way out is the legal diplomacy because the entire issue rests with the law enforcement and making laws of mutual legal assistance especially in terrorism cases which is also an obligation under UN resolution 1373”, Sufi maintained. He held that both the countries should make legislation to assist each other in terrorism cases so that confidence could be built on both the sides that the any party won’t cheat on the other. “To start with, the main thing both the countries should do is to start sharing legal information which is admissible in a court of law so that a proper trail and investigation could be carried on and accused are convicted if they are involved or no one should get benefit of weaknesses in the legal systems”, said the lawyer adding: “In the instant case of Uri attack too, instead of blaming Pakistan or threatening of attacking Pakistan, India should share legally admissible evidence with Pakistan so that a proper trail and investigation could be carried out against non-state actors”. 

Both the countries will have to move ahead from war of words and statements, he said. “As threatening statements have been made in the past two days, any surgical strike on Pakistan would equip Pakistan to reply under the UN Charter 2(4) which would mean that two nuclear powers are at war only because of the blame game and not sorting out the legal hinges in trying the terrorists on both the sides”, Ahmer Bilal Soofi mentioned.