ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - A Pakistani court on Friday freed on bail a man accused of plotting a 2008 militant assault on India's financial capital that killed 166 people and seriously strained ties between the nuclear-armed neighbours.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had condemned the prospect of bail for Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, which comes months after India and Pakistan were engaged in their worst cross-border violence in more than a decade in the disputed Kashmir region.
"Lakhvi has been released and he is out of the jail now," his lawyer, Malik Nasir Abbas, told Reuters. "I don't know where he will go now."
India blamed the Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba for the Mumbai attack. Ten gunmen infiltrated the city by boat and spent three days spraying bullets and throwing grenades around city landmarks.
Indian investigators said Lakhvi was Lashkar-e-Taiba military chief.
He was arrested in Pakistan in 2009 in connection with the attack.
Relations between India and Pakistan, which have fought three wars since independence in 1947, nosedived after the Mumbai attack and have not fully recovered. A dispute over the Kashmir region periodically flares into violence.
(Reporting by Reuters TV and Amjad Ali; Writing by Nick Macfie; Editing by Robert Birsel)
