India blasts Pakistan over hoax Mumbai call

Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper reported on Saturday that Pakistan had put its forces on high alert after a caller pretending to be Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee threatened President Asif Ali Zardari while the attacks were still going on.

“I can only ascribe this series of events to those in Pakistan who wish to divert attention from the fact that a terrorist group, operating from the Pakistani territory, planned and launched a ghastly attack on Mumbai,” Mukherjee said in a statement released on Sunday.

Pakistan insisted the call came from an official and verified phone number in India’s Foreign Ministry.

New Delhi has demanded Islamabad take swift action over what it says is the latest anti-India militant attack emanating from Pakistani soil.

At least 171 people were killed during the three-day assault last week across India’s financial capital, which has imperilled the improving ties between the south Asian nuclear rivals.

Officials from “third countries” called to inform Mukherjee of the hoax call, he said. He did not name them, but Dawn said the caller was a worried U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who was in both capitals last week to ease tensions.

“It is, however, worrying that a neighbouring state might even consider acting on the basis of such a hoax call,” he said.

Mumbai police have said the gunmen were controlled by the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) group blamed for earlier attacks including a 2001 assault on India’s parliament that nearly sparked a fourth war between India and Pakistan.

LeT was formed with the help of Pakistan’s intelligence agencies to fight Indian rule in Kashmir, but analysts say it is now part of a global jihadi network sympathetic to al-Qaida and may have direct ties with the al-Qaida network.

Britain’s Observer newspaper on Sunday reported it had used electoral rolls and accounts from villagers it did not identify to prove the only gunmen captured alive came from Faridkot, a village in the Okara district of Pakistan’s Punjab.

The gunman, whom the Observer identified as Ajmal Amir Kasab, had already told Indian police he came from there. But Zardari and other Pakistani sources have expressed doubt he was from Pakistan. Indian police identify him as Mohammed Ajmal Kasab.

In Mumbai, hundreds of Muslims wearing black ribbons held silent vigils outside some of the attack sites. They carried placards with messages like: “Enemies of our motherland are our enemies” or “Killers of the innocent are enemies of Islam.”

“These terrorists attack, and ordinary Muslims have to suffer the fallout and live in fear,” said Mumbai shopkeeper Salim Ali.

Last week, Muslim clerics refused to give burial rites to the nine dead gunmen. Most of India’s 1.1 billion people are Hindus, but about 13 percent are Muslims. Muslims and Hindus have clashed in the past, spurred by hardliners on either side.

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