NEW DELHI: Pakistan put the founder of a militant group blamed for the Mumbai attacks under house arrest yesterday, responding to intense pressure to wipe out what India called “the epicenter of terrorism.”
Earlier, India announced a massive overhaul of its security and intelligence agencies yesterday in the wake of the Mumbai terror attacks that left 172 dead and provoked a public outcry over the government’s response.
Among the new measures, the government will seek to create an FBI-style national investigative agency, beef up coastal security, better train local police, strengthen anti-terror laws and increase intelligence sharing, said Home Minister P. Chidambaram.
“Given the nature of the threat, we can’t go back to business as usual,” Chidambaram told India’s Parliament, adding he would “take certain hard decisions to prepare the country and people to face the challenge of terrorism.”
The detention of Hafiz Saeed, the founder of the outlawed Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) group who now runs the Jamaat-ud-Dawa charity seen as its front, came after the United Nations placed him on its terrorism sanctions list.
“Police have encircled the house of Hafiz Saeed in Lahore and told him he cannot go out of the home. They have told him detention orders will be formally served to him shortly,” Saeed’s spokesman Abdullah Montazir said.
A spokesman for Pakistan’s central bank said directives had been issued to banks to freeze the accounts of Jamaat-ud-Dawa, Saeed and three associates included in the UN sanctions.
But Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, speaking to Parliament before the lower house passed a largely symbolic resolution condemning the attacks and pledging to find those responsible, said Pakistan’s efforts had not been enough.
“We have to galvanize the international community into dealing sternly and effectively with the epicenter of terrorism, which is located in Pakistan. The infrastructure of terrorism has to be dismantled permanently,” he said.
Singh said he had told world leaders that India “could not be satisfied with mere assurances. We have noted the reported steps that have been taken by Pakistan. But clearly much more needs to be done and the actions should be pursued to their logical conclusion.”
He also reiterated that “all means and measures” needed to wipe out militants would be used.
India has been angry at what it sees as the Pakistani government’s tolerance of militants, and Indian External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee said earlier yesterday that India had given Pakistan a list of 40 people it wants handed over.
Asked by an angry lawmaker why India was not attacking Pakistan after so much proof of its complicity in fomenting trouble in India, Mukherjee replied: “That is no solution.”
Meanwhile, police in Mumbai backed off of plans to produce the only surviving attacker, Ajmal Qasab, in court yesterday for a routine hearing, citing security concerns.
Instead, a magistrate came to police headquarters and granted authorities permission to hold Qasab for a further two weeks, public prosecutor Eknath Dhamal said, without providing details of the decision.
