India blasts Pakistan over hoax Mumbai call

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India's foreign minister on Sunday accused Pakistan of trying to divert attention from the fact the Mumbai attacks were launched from its soil by leaking a story about a hoax call to Pakistan's president.

On Saturday, Pakistan's Dawn newspaper reported that Pakistan had put its forces on high alert after a caller pretending to be Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee was connected to President Asif Ali Zardari on November 28.

The caller threatened Zardari, prompting Pakistan to put its forces on high alert and setting off diplomatic panic.

"I can only ascribe this series of events to those in Pakistan who wish to divert attention from the fact that a terrorist group, operating from the Pakistani territory, planned and launched a ghastly attack on Mumbai," Mukherjee said in a statement released on Sunday.

New Delhi has demanded Islamabad take swift action over what it says is the latest anti-India militant attack emanating from Pakistani soil.

At least 171 people were killed during the three-day assault last week across India's financial capital, which has imperilled improving ties between the long-time south Asian nuclear rivals.

"It is, however, worrying that a neighbouring state might even consider acting on the basis of such a hoax call, try to give it credibility with other states, and confuse the public by releasing the story in part," Mukherhjee said.

Officials from "third countries" called to inform Mukherjee of the hoax call, he said. He did not name them, but Dawn said it was U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who was in both capitals last week to ease tensions.

Mumbai police have said the gunmen were controlled by the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) group blamed for earlier attacks in India including a 2001 assault on India's parliament that nearly sparked a fourth war between India and Pakistan.

LeT was formed to fight Indian rule in Kashmir with Pakistani intelligence help, but analysts say it is now part of a global jihadi network sympathetic to al Qaeda and may have direct ties.

INDIAN LINKS DEEPEN

The 60-hour rampage sparked public anger at the failure to prevent the attacks, which have been capitalised on by India's main opposition party in the lead-up to elections due by May.

India's newly home minister has admitted there were security lapses, and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has proposed a national counterterrorism agency that could cut across state lines which currently divide police operations.

Police have already arrested a man they now identify as Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, the only one of the 10 gunmen captured alive, and on Friday arrested two others they say helped get the attackers get mobile phone cards.

Police in the Himalayan region of Kashmir, over which Indian and Pakistan have fought for six decades, on Sunday said one of those men had worked with them.

"We understand a Kashmiri man working for Jammu and Kashmir police has been arrested, originally for links to the Mumbai attacks. We are investigating whether he was on an undercover operation," a top Kashmir police officer said on condition of anonymity.

The officer said the man, Mukhtar Ahmed, had worked as an informant for several years after his brother was killed by Muslim militants, and was recently hired as a constable.

Police in the eastern city of Kolkata tracked Ahmed after arresting clerk Taufis Rehman, whom they said had used a dead relative's identity to buy 22 mobile phone cards. Ahmed took them but police did not say how they ended up in the gunmen's hands.

In the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, a LeT-linked man suspected of doing reconnaissance on Mumbai well before the attacks has languished in custody since February, police Special Task Force chief Brij Lal told Reuters.

The existence of Faim Ansari, 26, was the first evidence of homegrown Indian complicity in the attacks to emerge. Lal said he had trained with LeT after being recruited in Dubai, and returned home with the assumed name of Sahil Pawaskar.

"Strangely, Mumbai police had returned Ansari when we sought to hand him over to them after we discovered Mumbai road maps highlighting places like the CST railway station, the Taj hotel and state police headquarters in his possession," Lal said.

"Now that several of these places marked on the road maps were targeted during the terror attack on Mumbai, Ansari has turned valuable for the Mumbai cops, who are coming to question him," Lal said.

Mumbai police had no immediate comment.

(Reporting by New Delhi, Mumbai and Islamabad bureaux and Sharat Pradhan in Lucknow and Sheikh Mushtaq in Srinagar; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)