Pak claims India cooked up story about Kasab

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Wednesday claimed that India had cooked up a story about Ajmal Amir Iman Kasab, the lone terrorist captured during the Mumbai attacks, being a Pakistani and had even failed in that too.

Questioning the authenticity of the letter written by Kasab to seek legal aid from Pakistan government, interior secretary Syed Kamal Shah said: "They (Indians) have simply tried to make up a story and have even failed in that too."

The language and contents of Kasab's letter did not "match those of a real Pakistani," he claimed while talking to reporters during a visit to the headquarters of the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA), Pakistan's national database, on Tuesday.

Shah repeated interior ministry chief Rehman Malik's claim that no records of Kasab had been found in the NADRA database. However, the database covers only 60 million of Pakistan's total population of over 160 million.

Shah also said the Indian authorities had not yet shared evidence on the Mumbai attacks with Pakistan. "Why did the Indians not share the identity of the others accused in the attacks? They are talking just about Ajmal Kasab, who was not even arrested from the crime scene," he claimed.

He also said that one of the mobile phone SIMs allegedly recovered from Kasab was issued from Austria.

Kasab's father recently admitted in an interview to the Dawn newspaper that the gunman whose picture was beamed around the world by the media was his son. Residents of Kasab's village of Faridkot, Punjab province too have told the Pakistani media that he belonged to the area.