NEW DELHI -- Following the Pakistan Interior Ministry's statement that India should provide concrete evidence against Jamaat-ud-Dawa chief Hafiz Saeed, the man behind the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks and whom Islamabad put under house arrest earlier this week, India on Thursday said all evidence against the terror mastermind was available in Pakistan itself.
"The entire conspiracy in the Mumbai terror attack case was hatched in Pakistan," External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Vikas Swarup said in a weekly media briefing here.
"All the terrorists came from Pakistan. All the planning was done in Pakistan. All the support was rendered from Pakistan. So, all the evidence to implicate the mastermind of the Mumbai terror attack is already available in Pakistan," he said.
Pakistan on Wednesday snubbed India's demand for a "credible crackdown" on militant groups following the detention of Jamaat-ud-Dawa chief Hafiz Saeed, saying it does not need New Delhi's endorsement for its actions.
"Pakistan does not need any certification or endorsement from India over the recent actions it has taken in relation to Hafiz Saeed," a spokesperson for the federal Interior Ministry said in a statement in response to Tuesday's statement by the Indian Ministry of External Affairs.
The spokesperson said the actions taken by the government were carried out as per "obligations vis-à-vis listing of JuD under UN Security Council Resolution 1267 in December, 2008". He, however, said various actions that needed to be taken under the relevant resolution i.e. arms embargo, travel ban and asset freeze were not taken for some reason by the previous regime.
"India has constantly been using Hafiz Saeed's political activities as a tool to malign Pakistan," the spokesperson said, adding that the international community should take note and understand that Pakistan is a democratic country. "In Pakistan judiciary takes free, independent and transparent decisions."
The Interior Ministry urged New Delhi to come up with undeniable evidence against the JuD chief if it were serious about the allegations.
"India should come up with concrete evidence against Hafiz Saeed which is sustainable in court of law in Pakistan or for that matter anywhere in the world," the statement said.
The ministry warned New Delhi against "casting aspersions and levelling allegations without any corroborating evidence", saying it would not help the cause of peace in the region.
The firebrand leader, who has a $10-million bounty on his head, was taken away by police on Monday and escorted to a house where he is now under house arrest. Four other JuD followers were detained in the same operation.
India said JuD was a front for the militant Lashkar-e-Taiba group, which it accuses of carrying out the attacks on India's financial capital Mumbai in November 2008 which killed 166 people. Islamabad briefly detained Saeed in the aftermath of the attacks but he was later released on court orders.
Swarup on Thursday said Hafiz Saeed has himself confessed to masterminding multiple acts of terror directed at India.
"So the so called concrete evidence that Pakistani establishment is looking for is already available in Pakistan. All they need is to find the requisite political will," he added.
'Indica: A Deep Natural History Of The Indian Subcontinent' Is More Compelling Than Sci-Fi
(01 of11)
Open Image Modal‘Narmada Man’ was the first early human discovered in 1982 in Hathnora, MP. Believed to be 236,000 years old, ‘he’ was subsequently discovered to be a woman between 27-32 years of age. The Narmada basin contains many early fossils. (credit:Arun Sonakia)
(02 of11)
Open Image ModalGeologists call the rocks at Kanyakumari, including the one on which the Vivekananda memorial stands, the ‘Gondwana junction’, because this marks the place where India, Madagascar, Sri Lanka, East Antarctica and Australia were once joined together, forming the supercontinent, Gondwana. (credit:Bridget Liddell)
(03 of11)
Open Image ModalBarapasaurus, India’s largest plant-eating dinosaur, lived approx. 176 million years ago. It measured around 18 metres and weighed about 7 tonnes—a 6-ft adult would only reach its thigh. It was displayed at the Indian Statistical Institute in 1977. (credit:Dmitry Bogdanov, Wikimedia Commons)
(04 of11)
Open Image ModalThis hot spring near Leh, Ladakh, is home to both the earliest sulphur anaerobes and oxygen-producing blue-green bacteria. These tough life forms have survived every extinction event since they evolved nearly 3 billion years ago. Should all life on Earth be wiped out, chances are that organisms like these will resume the process of evolution. (credit:Elroy Serrao)
(05 of11)
Open Image ModalNearly 300 million years ago, Mamal in Kashmir would have looked like this tree-fern forest of Arunachal. The Mamal forest was dominated by lycopod trees and could grow as high as 30ft but were still dwarfed by the 100ft-tall lycopods. Trees contributed to the Great Oxygen Event which helped life evolve on earth. (credit:Jahanu Sengupta)
(06 of11)
Open Image ModalThe Lonar crater was made by a meteor collision 50,000 years or so ago. A circular lake lies at the centre of the crater. Notice another small green lake to the right, close to the town, which was formed from a small portion of the meteorite, which disintegrated and fell here. (credit:NASA)
(07 of11)
Open Image ModalSpectacular discoveries of dinosaur nest sites and eggs have been made across India, but principally in Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu. Dinosaur eggs clearly came in a variety of shapes and sizes. These are from Raiholi, Gujarat. (credit:Pranay Lal)
(08 of11)
Open Image ModalEverest is seldom seen without its cover of snow. But it is only thenthat the famous yellow band is visible. The light-grey summit of the Everest contains fossils of small creatures that lived on a sea shore about 350 million years ago, but t now sit 8500 metres above sea level. (credit:Rajesh Pant)
(09 of11)
Open Image ModalThese Indian lizards lived 160 million years ago. Here two Indosuchus (right) have ganged up to ward off a challenge from the larger Rajasaurus (left). In the foreground, smaller Indosaurus feed on bits of flesh that they have stolen from the carcass of a juvenile Titanosaur. (credit:Sergey Krasovskiy)
(10 of11)
Open Image ModalRamanagara rocks, not far from Bengaluru, were formed around 2.5 billion years ago, and establish India as one of the oldest countries in the world. But the rocks are more famous for lending an eerie atmosphere to the Bollywood blockbuster Sholay. This was the perch of Samba, the henchman of the arch villain, Gabbar Singh! (credit:Tanmay Haldar)
(11 of11)
Open Image ModalThis image of the delta of the Ganga and Brahmaputra at the peak of monsoons, shows sediment a carried deep into the Bay of Bengal to form the Bengal Fans. Compared to other rivers, sediments deposited by the Bengal Fans are the thickest and largest in size, and extend several thousand kms. (credit:European Space Agency)