By IANS
New Delhi : India Monday shared with Pakistan evidence of the alleged complicity of the latter’s intelligence agencies in the Hyderabad bomb blasts and brought up the involvement of terrorists based in Pakistan in terror attacks in Ludhiana and Ajmer.
The two countries also discussed modalities of exchanging information on terrorist attacks in each other’s territory as they ended the second meeting of their joint anti-terror mechanism here.
“The two sides reviewed the follow up steps taken on the information shared during the first meeting of the joint anti-terrorism mechanism held in Islamabad March 6 and in the intervening period,” the Indian external affairs ministry said.
In the talks between K.C. Singh and Khalid Aziz Babar, both additional secretaries in the Indian and Pakistani foreign ministries respectively, the two sides shared “new information on terrorist incidents including those which have occurred since the last meeting”, the statement said.
Both India and Pakistan have suffered a string of terror attacks this year. Indian officials say that sections of the Pakistani security establishment still maintain close links with terrorist groups ranged against New Delhi.
A bomb tore through the India-Pakistan Samjhauta Express in February in Haryana, killing at least 70 people, mostly Pakistanis.
Nine people were killed when a bomb exploded in Hyderabad’s historic Mecca Masjid in May. In August, two bomb explosions – in an open-air theatre and at a restaurant – also in Hyderabad left 44 people dead.
This month, a cinema theatre was bombed in Ludhiana in Punjab and a bomb killed three people at South Asia’s most revered Sufi shrine in Ajmer in Rajasthan.
“They agreed to continue to work to identify measures, exchange specific information and assist in investigations,” the statement said.
The next meeting of the India-Pakistan mechanism will be held in Islamabad, probably in January 2008.
India also asked Pakistan for follow-up action based on the photograph of a terrorist suspected to have detonated a bomb in the Samjhauta Express train.
The Indian side provided the Pakistanis “pinpointed information” about jehadi groups based in Pakistan said to be involved in several bomb blasts in India, a highly placed Indian source told IANS.
“We were able to furnish details of the involvement of the Pakistan-based groups in the Hyderabad blasts and their movements in the last few months,” the source said.
The Indian side did most of the talking, offering concrete evidence and conveying their concern and anguish at the continuing cross-border terrorism, the source added.
Although there has been no concrete evidence of a Pakistani hand in the Ajmer and Ludhiana blasts, Indian officials pointed out that Pakistan’s Inter Service Intelligence (ISI) was inciting activists of Babbar Khalsa International (BKI), a terror outfit that spearheaded militancy in the 1980s.
Last week, National Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan said Pakistan was trying to revive militancy again in Punjab.
Senior intelligence officials told IANS that the interrogation of arrested Punjab militants showed they were under constant pressure from the ISI to show results and revive terrorism in the sensitive state that borders Pakistan.
India and Pakistan agreed to hold a quarterly meeting of the anti-terror institutional mechanism on the sidelines of the Non-Aligned Movement summit in Havana in September last year.
The mechanism followed the horrific bombings in Mumbai’s commuter trains last year that led to a brief suspension of the composite dialogue between the two countries.