He is counsel for Hafiz Saeed, and in Monday’s triumph in court, he has added to India’s frustrations. He says he’s only doing a job — as he does with his other clients, a group that includes the Communist Party of Pakistan. And deep inside him still lives the child victim of Partition who cannot forget his school by a railway line in undivided Punjab.

A K Dogar, lawyer for Jamaat-ud-Dawa chief Saeed, is an unlikely candidate for nostalgia.

“I reminisce about my days in india. I recall Hoshiarpur, my birthplace, and the train journeys I would make with my father to the erstwhile kingdom of Rampur where I went to school,” he told The Indian Express. “Jalandhar, Ludhiana, Jagadhri, Moradabad make up the montage of those journeys... My school was beside a railway line... I am very keen to visit the land I left behind in 1947.”

He is unapologetic about defending the man New Delhi considers the mastermind of the worst terrorist outrage on Indian soil.

“I am a professional,” Dogar says. “My job begins and ends with defending the client. My profession is a very responsible one. I consider it the best.”

And adds, somewhat patronisingly, “Your country has produced some leading lights amongst lawyers. Like Mahatma Gandhi, Sardar Patel and Pandit Nehru.”

On Monday, the Lahore High Court quashed the FIRs against his client, saying the JuD was not proscribed under Pakistan’s Anti-Terrorism Act, hence Saeed could not be charged under it.

... contd.