Pakistan wants to invite the Indian Cricket Team to their land for the Champions Trophy and is assuring the safety of the Indian Team. Some of the Pakistani sympathizers, sitting in India, too are piping the same tune as Pakistan. The pro-Pakistan lobby is busy criticizing the BCCI over its decision to not visit Pakistan for the Champions Trophy.
But can the Pakistani side really assure the safety of the Indian Cricket Team when dreaded terrorists continue to roam freely in Pakistan?? Incidentally, an India Today exclusive report has revealed that the chief military commander of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and the main orchestrator of the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, is still carrying out his activities safely in Pakistan. Alarmingly, he is mainly active in Pakistani cities that want to host the Indian cricket team for the ICC Champions Trophy 2025. He continues to do so by using a new identity.
All sensible people desire peace between India & Pakistan. But what @arvindojha & @AnkiitKoomar have exposed is the decade’s biggest slap to mindless ‘Aman ki asha’ pseudos.
Please listen to these two journalists: pic.twitter.com/QaRVGwrpLK
— Shiv Aroor (@ShivAroor) November 16, 2024
For those unversed, Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi was identified by David Headley, a former US DEA agent, as being the key person behind the 2008 Mumbai attacks that claimed the lives of over 175 people. Once jailed by a Pakistani court, Lakhvi now lives openly in Lahore, Rawalpindi, and Okara, cities that will plan to host the Indian cricket team during the Champions Trophy, in case the Indian side falls’ pray to Pakistan’s ploy.
Listed by the UN Security Council’s Al-Qaida Sanctions Committee, Lakhvi now goes by the alias Abu Wasi. Despite international sanctions and intelligence confirming his ties to Al-Qaida, he has evaded meaningful accountability in Pakistan. Reports indicate that his 2021 conviction in a terror finance case was a superficial effort to avoid Financial Action Task Force (FATF) blacklisting.
A recent video circulating on social media shows a 63-year-old man undergoing a supervised fitness test. It has made the speculations pop up of the man being none other than Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi. The India Today Open Source Investigation Team (OSINT) confirmed the identity using three facial recognition programs, of the 63-year-old man being Lakhvi. He was cheered on by notable figures such as Dr. Muhammad Saeed, an assistant professor at Islamabad’s National University of Modern Languages (NUML), and Dr. Zaid Haris, an Islamic scholar. Their public support for Lakhvi raises concerns about extremism even within Pakistan’s academic and cultural spaces.
The fitness event trainer, Syed Muhammad, initially claimed ignorance about Lakhvi’s identity, describing the event as a “family gathering” from early COVID-19 days. However, this assertion was debunked as official records confirmed Lakhvi’s age as 63 in 2024, aligning with the video’s timeline. Muhammad and Haris are also linked to interactions with Pakistani military officials, as seen in photos shared on their social media.
“Sports Knows No boundaries”, and “Art knows no boundaries” are some of the sanctimonious statements being poured by Pakistan and its apologists in India to normalize the relations between the two countries ignoring the repeated cross-border terrorism Pakistan engages itself which has claimed thousands of lives of Indians every year. And the presence of Lakhvi in Pakistan proves the fact that Pakistan is not safe for the Indian cricket team to visit and also the terrorist state harbors terrorism like no other.