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Yet it is nearly impossible for Islamabad to clip Saeed’s wings, given the huge respect and support he and his organizations command as charitable institutions.

Experts in Pakistan say that Saeed is a godfather to hundreds of thousands of poor and “downtrodden” people, and is considered an asset for Pakistan. Consequently it is almost impossible to ban him or keep him under detention for long.

“It is illegal to detain Hafiz Saeed,” said Qazi Hussain Ahmed, head of Jamaat-e-Islami, a religious political party in Pakistan, in a comment to the media. “He is not a terrorist. He is a respected personality of the nation and he is the head of an organization which is known for providing social services and for providing education to the people of Pakistan, especially to those who cannot afford education.

“He is also known for providing life-saving services like relief for earthquakes and the like. By insisting on his arrest and banning him and his organization, India is trying to weaken Pakistan and its national integrity.”

Pakistan’s newly elected civilian government arrested Saeed in mid-December last year, alleging that he was the mastermind behind the November Mumbai attacks. His sudden release Tuesday came by order of the Lahore High Court. It is a familiar pattern for the former Islamic scholar, now in his late fifties.

The lone arrested terrorist of the Mumbai attacks, Ajmal Kasab, said that Saeed had visited the militants during their training in Pakistan and had even abetted the strikes. Based on evidence gathered by global sleuths following the Mumbai attacks, a U.N. Security Council panel declared Saeed and the JuD a front for the outlawed and dreaded terror group, Lashker-e-Taiba. The U.N. panel recommended that Saeed and his group should be subjected to sanctions such as an asset freeze and a travel ban.

Yet in releasing Saeed, Pakistan said the country did not have enough proof to implicate him in the Mumbai attacks. Islamabad even blamed India for failing to pin Saeed down, saying the Pakistani government could not provide evidence in court owing to India's “non-cooperative attitude.” Islamabad said India did not allow Pakistani authorities to inspect the sites of the attacks in Mumbai to gather proof.

Such excuses appear feeble considering that Pakistan has failed several times in the past to keep Saeed in custody for any length of time. For instance, in 2001 Pakistan detained him following Indian accusations of his involvement with the December 2001 attack on India’s Parliament, but he was quickly released on flimsy grounds.

At India’s insistence Pakistan arrested Saeed again on May 15, 2002, and placed him under house arrest, but had to release him five months later on a court order. He was arrested yet again in August 2006, following the Mumbai train bombings the previous month, but like the earlier instances was released a few days later on Lahore High Court orders.

According to Pakistani analysts Tabish Qayyum and Hammad Qureshi, JuD is widely considered an asset for Pakistan. They claim that besides its many charitable activities and aid work, JuD is also involved in curing misguided jihadist elements.

Others would argue that the opposite is true – that although the JuD runs schools for the poor, they are in fact breeding grounds for terrorists. JuD did attract major support from Pakistanis for helping rehabilitate earthquake victims in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. And more recently the group was reportedly involved in helping some 80,000 refugees flee the Pakistani army’s offensive against Taliban insurgents in the Swat Valley.

“Clearly then, the JuD enjoys enormous sympathy in Pakistan,” said Nick Jones, Asia editor of the London-based think tank, Oxford Analytica. “JuD may be seen as a terrorist front by Indians and Americans, but for everyday Pakistanis what may come to mind is disaster relief and charitable work.”

According to Jones, even if JuD uses terrorist violence, like Hezbollah in Lebanon or the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, it also wholeheartedly pursues social welfare initiatives, making it much harder to uproot.

While Saeed’s release is a blow to India’s efforts to ensure that Pakistan brings the perpetrators of the November Mumbai attacks to justice, it also has much wider global implications.

In Europe and the United States in particular, the return of Manmohan Singh as India’s prime minister and Pakistan’s intensification of actions against the Taliban are widely seen as favorable developments for the resumption and deepening of the India-Pakistan peace dialogue, according to Jones.

“There is a belief in Washington that the situation in Afghanistan would be substantially eased if Pakistan felt less threatened by India,” said Jones. “That might lead the army to cut ties with militant groups and stop supporting the insurgency across the border.

“Unfortunately, incidents like the Saeed release are strongly detrimental to trust between India and Pakistan. Zardari has promised to root out terrorist groups that act against India, but the failure to bring a strong case against Saeed leaves the credibility of such statements in shreds, particularly before the Indian public.”

Although India has expressed its “disappointment” over the release, S. M. Krishna, minister for external affairs, has said the country would continue its dialogue with Pakistan in controlling terrorism in the region.

On the other hand, the United States has cautiously reserved comment on the release of the alleged terror mastermind.

Reminding Pakistan of its commitment to punish the perpetrators of the Mumbai attacks, U.S. State Department spokesman Robert Wood said the United States had made it clear that there is an international responsibility to cooperate and bring the perpetrators to justice, and that Pakistan had a special responsibility to do so, transparently, fully and urgently.

But it is doubtful that Pakistan would be able to uproot Saeed’s group even if it had the will. The vast JuD network speaks of a well-resourced and broadly supported organization that would take massive police work to eradicate.

Pakistan's police are under resourced, and perhaps too demoralized, for a clampdown on JuD. Also, the unpopular military and shaky government of President Asif Ali Zardari would not dare to invite public wrath by clamping down on an organization with such deep social roots.

Saeed's release may be a setback for India-Pakistan relations, but Jones says it is not impossible to recover from it.

“Both sides can portray it as a technical upset in judicial proceedings, if they wish,” he said. “Pakistan used to be a significant regional rival that India needed to contain, but the threat now is of overspill from a state meltdown. The threat may now be worrying enough for the Singh government to do all it can to stabilize rather than weaken India's neighbor.”