India on Wednesday said Pakistan was in ”denial” over the Mumbai attacks and was refusing to acknowledge evidence linking the gunmen who carried out the assault with elements in Pakistan.
”If anyone is in a state of denial, anything that we give will be denied,” Home Minister P Chidambaram told reporters.
The minister said the Pakistani father of the sole surviving gunman had confirmed to Pakistan television that his son was involved.
”If that is not evidence then what is?” Chidambaram said.
The November attacks in Mumbai left 172 dead, including nine of the gunmen whom India insists were trained by the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group and abetted by unnamed Pakistani agencies.
Last week Pakistan’s acting High Commissioner, Afrasiab Mehdi Hashmi, was summoned to the Indian Foreign Ministry and given a letter purportedly written by the sole surviving gunman, Mohammed Ajmal Amir Iman.
The letter said he was from Pakistan and that he wanted to meet Pakistan’s top envoy in New Delhi.
India’s junior Foreign Minister, Anand Sharma, said on Wednesday that New Delhi had supplied clinching evidence to Islamabad, linking the attackers to groups in Pakistan.
”Everyone knows who are the conspirators and from where they came. We have given enough evidence,” Sharma told reporters in the Indian city of Chandigarh.
”Evidence is not only with India but also with the investigating agencies of the United States and Britain, [and] instead of being in a denial mode, Pakistan should take effective steps to bring those responsible to justice,” he said.
Pakistan has so far banned a charity that India says is a front for the Lashkar guerrillas and put several radical Islamist leaders under house arrest. — AFP
