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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...