By Muhammad Sajjad, IANS,
Islamabad : The Pakistan Navy chief Saturday virtually did a turnaround on his controversial remark – that there was no evidence to prove Ajmal Amir Kasab took the sea route to India to launch the Mumbai terror strikes – by saying the interior ministry might know better.
“The Pakistan Navy is not directly involved in the investigations into the Mumbai attacks. This is being handled by the interior ministry. Therefore they are better equipped and might have better knowledge in this regard,” Admiral Noman Bashir told reporters at the Karachi Shipyard.
He insisted there were no differences between the interior ministry and the navy on the issue. “By no means I’m going against the findings of the interior ministry in this regard,” he said.
“The Pakistan Navy has no evidence but that does not mean that the ministry of interior also does not have evidence,” he said.
Bashir had Friday kicked up a controversy by saying there was no evidence to suggest that Kasab, the lone terrorist captured during the Mumbai mayhem, had used the sea route from Pakistan to India to carry out the 26/11 terrorist strikes in Mumbai that killed over 170 people.
Referring to these remarks, he said he could only speak as the naval chief and that he was not the government spokesman.
Bashir said Pakistan’s coastline could not be manned everywhere and there were holes in its security. “So any such possibility cannot be denied out rightly. But what I do not know I cannot comment on because this would complicate the situation further.”