ISLAMABAD: A Pakistani anti-terror court today threw out requests to acquit seven suspects accused by rival India of helping to carry out the 2008 Mumbai attacks, a defence lawyer said.

Pakistan is holding seven suspects over the November 26-29 siege on India’s financial capital, including the alleged mastermind of the operation, Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, and alleged Lashkar-e-Taiba operative Zarar Shah.

The court in the garrison town of Rawalpindi indicted the men on the eve of the first anniversary of India’s worst militant attacks, which killed at least 166 people and ruptured a fragile peace process with Pakistan. “The court dismissed the acquittal plea by the seven men and adjourned the hearing until January 16,” lawyer Shahbaz Rajput told AFP over phone.

All seven put forward their applications, disputing the veracity of evidence from the prosecution. The anti-terror court met in a special room set up in the high-security Adiala jail and journalists have been barred from all hearings. “The seven people had requested the court that the prosecution’s evidence had no validity in the eyes of law,” Rajput said.

India and Washington blamed the Mumbai siege on Pakistan’s banned militant group LeT. The attacks stalled a fragile peace process between the two South Asian rivals.