RAWALPINDI, Feb 18: The counsels for Pakistani suspects in the Mumbai attack case prior to their India visit for cross examining the prosecution witnesses filed another application with the anti-terrorism court here, seeking statement of the Indian chief investigating officer of the case.

According to Riaz Akram Cheema, one of the defence counsel, the prosecutors had responded to their applications regarding issuance of proper notification of their visit, transferring the record and giving the counsels four CDs of CCTV footage of the attacks.

On Saturday, however, the counsels told the ATC judge, Shahid Rafiq, that they also needed the statement and investigation reports for cross-examining Ramesh Mahale, the chief investigating officer, as well as other three prosecution witnesses - woman magistrate R.V. Sawant Waghule, who had recorded the confessional statement of Ajmal Kasab, and the two doctors who carried out post-mortem on the bodies of the terrorists killed during the attacks.

Mr Cheema said the defence counsel requested the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) to appoint a Lahore-based coordinator because most of the lawyers were from Lahore. “But contrary to our requests, they appointed a Karachi-based FIA officer who is, interestingly, a prosecution witness in the case and should not be sent along with the panel,” he added.

FIA senior public prosecutor Chaudhry Zulfiqar Ali submitted to the court a new schedule for the visit of the 10-member Pakistani panel to India from March 13.

Earlier, Indian external affairs ministry had sent the schedule for the Mumbai commission to visit India from February 1 to February 10 but due to certain reasons the panel could not go within the stipulated time.

Prosecutor Ali told Dawn that this time both Indian and Pakistani governments had agreed to keep an open-ended schedule because the process of recording of statements and cross examining the four Indian prosecution witnesses might take some time. He added that ideally the process should not be more than of four days.

Regarding the application filed by the defence counsel, he said the investigating officers and doctors had never recorded their statements.

Though the prosecution produced them as their witnesses, they always brought their reports instead of giving statements. He said the defence counsel wanted to further delay the matter but he would answer to their application on the next date of hearing on February 25.

It may be mentioned that the chief justice of Mumbai High Court has nominated S.S. Shinde, the chief metropolitan magistrate Mumbai, as the presiding officer of the Judicial Commission.

In order to conclude the trial of the seven Pakistani suspects, – Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, Abdul Wajid, Mazhar Iqbal, Hammad Amin Saddiq, Shahid Jameel Riaz, Jamil Ahmed and Younus Anjum – the FIA needed the recording of statements and cross examination of the four Indian prosecution witnesses.