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KARACHI, Dec 11: The targeting of Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jamaatud Dawa and the rounding up of the activists belonging to the two jihadi organisations appear to have been triggered by information originating in India following the capture of one of the 10 men who attacked several targets in Mumbai towards the end of last month. During the course of Dawn's own investigations last week our reporters were able to locate a family who claimed to be the kin of the arrested young man in Mumbai. The sole survivor among the 10 attackers was named as Ajmal Kasab and was supposed to belong to the village Faridkot in the Punjab. Media organisations such as the BBC and now the British newspaper Observer have done reports trying to ascertain the veracity of claims appearing in the media that the young man had a home there. On Friday last, the BBC reported unusual activity in Faridkot near Deepalpur . A BBC correspondent located a house in the village, the then inhabitants of which carried the surn...

From : Letters to the Editor section, Published in The Dawn , Pakistan,6 Dec 08 READING Qamar Iqbal's letter, 'Mumbai: India blames Pakistan' , and the several reports titled , (i) ' India sending top official to US' , (ii) 'The misplaced hype about Faridko't , (iii) 'Gunmen spoke Hindi with strong Punjabi, north Indian accent' and (iv) 'Taj hotel was warned of attack' , (all in Dawn's Dec 1 issue), only strengthened my earlier conclusions. Going by some of the past actions of the Indians, I had already suspected that the attacks on Mumbai had been engineered by New Delhi in order to ward off the immense and increasing pressure it has been coming under on two accounts. First, the peaceful and massive uprising in Kashmir in recent months has caught the Indian establishment and even the independence-minded Kashmiri leaders by surprise. What is worse, some Indian intellectuals and rights activists, too, are now demanding of their leaders...

Tracing the gunmen A sleepy village in Pakistan has found itself at the centre of the Mumbai terror plot, leaving locals bewildered. FARIDKOT, PAKISTAN — Everyone knows everyone in Faridkot, so residents of this tiny Pakistani village are baffled by allegations that one of their own was the sole survivor of a commando-style terrorist outfit that staged one of the most daring terrorist attacks ever seen. "There are no jihadis here," said Ijaz Ahmed, a 41-year-old farmer. "I can think of maybe 10 or 20 people here who have even been as far as Multan," he said, referring to the nearest large city, 55 kilometres away. The village, in the southern part of the Punjab province, has been overrun by Pakistani intelligence agents and police for the past three days , after it was reported by Indian officials and media that the lone gunman who was caught alive in the Mumbai mayhem came from a place called Faridkot in Pakistan. Agents from Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelli...