India plans to invoke 32 year old commonwealth pact with Pakistan: Report

India plans to invoke 32 year old commonwealth pact with Pakistan: Report

NEW DELHI - India plans to invoke a 32-year-old Commonwealth pact to seek details from Pakistan about the 2018 Sunjawan Army camp terror attack mastermind Mufti Waqas, a Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) militant who was killed by security forces in March this year, according to officials.

The move is also expected to help India in making a fresh appeal to the United Nations to get the JeM and its chief Maulana Masood Azhar banned under the Security Council resolution 1267. China has blocked previous moves by India seeking a ban on the JeM and Azhar, PTI has reported.

According to officials in the Union Home and External Affairs ministries, the relevant papers were being readied to send a request to Pakistan under the Commonwealth pact for international cooperation in criminal matters, under which commonwealth nations are bound to provide Mutual Legal Assistance on such issues, they said.

The agreement was originally adopted by Commonwealth law ministers at their meeting at Harare in Zimbabwe in 1986.