New Delhi, September 26
India has again told Pakistan to speed up the 26/11 trial and hand over the voice samples of the accused. Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde met his Pakistani counterpart Rehman Malik on the sidelines of the SAARC Home and Interior Ministers’ conference at Maldives today.

Apart from a discussion on the Mumbai attacks, both sides agreed that the newly-signed bilateral visa agreement (signed on September 8) would be operationalised from a mutually-agreed date, after the notification of the visa rules and regulations by the respective governments.

Malik reportedly requested Shinde to allow Judicial Commission of Pakistan to visit India again. Shinde assured his counterpart of an early response to this request.

Pakistan has been asked for speeding up the trial against Zarar Shah Lakhvi and six other Pakistani suspects charged with involvement in the 2008 Mumbai attack.

At the last hearing on September 15, three officials of the Federal Investigation Agency came to Pakistan's Adiala Jail, where the trial is being conducted, but were unable to testify. The trial has been delayed due to a variety of technical reason also while the court's judge was changed five times.

A Pakistani commission had visited India following a bilateral agreement which said the commission would not quiz the magistrate, who recorded the confessional statement of arrested LeT terrorist Ajmal Kasab and the investigating officer of the case and two doctors, who conducted the post-mortem of the nine slain terrorists. However, after the Pakistani court dealing with the 26/11 case had said that evidence collected by the commission during its first visit to India in March had no "evidential value" to punish those involved in the Mumbai terror attack, Islamabad had asked New Delhi to allow its panel to visit Mumbai again.

Shinde raised the issue of illegal border crossings, including infiltration along the International Border and Line of Control and both of them agreed that designated authorities would address these concerns and review the matter from time to time. This was the first meeting between the two leaders following their telephone conversation on August 19 that was when Shinde had accused Pakistan-based elements of uploading morphed images and videos to fan communal violence in India. Shinde and Malik expressed their satisfaction on the resumed India-Pakistan Home Secretaries' dialogue.