India could be behind Lahore shrine bombing: Saeed

Jamaat-ud-Dawah chief Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, blamed by India for masterminding the 2008 Mumbai carnage, on Tuesday night said New Delhi has never presented any evidence to back up its assertions that his group was involved in several terrorist attacks.

"India can present evidence against my group in any court of the world. We had no link to the attack on the Indian Parliament (in 2001) and I have said this several times," Saeed, also the founder of the banned Lashker-e-Toiba, told Geo News channel.

Saeed was responding to a question on India's assertion that the LeT was behind the attack on Parliament and the co-ordinated assault on Mumbai that killed 166 people.

"But what I say is just dismissed and India has never presented evidence (of the JuD's involvement in these attacks)," he added.

Asked who was behind last week's suicide bombing of the Data Darbar shrine in Lahore that killed 45 people, Saeed replied, "I think there should be a proper investigation against India and its allies, who are avowed enemies of Pakistan."

Saeed contended that the Pakistan government should hold talks with banned militant groups instead of launching a crackdown on them.

"I say that the culprits or those involved in (terror) attacks should be caught. This is the government's responsibility. They should be punished.

"But to blame the whole group and to make this a basis for religious hatred and to make it a political problem (is not right). I do not consider it a political problem. I want that the government should bring together all these groups and people who are being blamed and hold consultations with them," he said.

"If America can today hold talks with the Taliban, why can't the government of Pakistan solve these problems through negotiations with these various groups?" he added.

Saeed claimed there was "no justification for attacks on ordinary and innocent people under the Shariah" or Islamic law.
He claimed that recent terrorist attacks were "part of a foreign conspiracy to spread religious hatred within Pakistan".

"We think the attacks in any form are not right. Those who attack innocent people should be hanged," he said.

Responding to a question on the causes of terrorism in Pakistan, Saeed said: "Pakistan was forced to become a frontline state for America (in the war against terror) and I think we are suffering all this because of whatever is happening in Afghanistan."

"Our position from the beginning has been that we should not fight America's war," he said.
Saeed was briefly put under house arrest by Pakistani authorities in the wake of the Mumbai attacks after the UN Security Council designated the JuD a front for the LeT.

He was freed on the orders of the Lahore High Court last year.