India Foreign Ministry spokesman Vikas Swarup. Fred Dufour—AFP
Foreign ministry says Jamaat-ud-Dawa chief has been arrested before to little effect.
India on Tuesday demanded Pakistan conduct a “credible crackdown” on militant groups after one of the alleged masterminds of the 2008 Mumbai attacks was detained at a mosque in Lahore.
“Exercises such as yesterday’s orders against Hafiz Saeed and others have been carried out by Pakistan in the past also,” India’s foreign ministry said after the leader of the Jamaat-ud-Dawa group was placed under “preventative detention” on Monday night. “Only a credible crackdown on the mastermind of the Mumbai terrorist attack and terrorist organizations involved in cross-border terrorism would be proof of Pakistan’s sincerity,” it added in a statement.
The firebrand cleric, who has a $10 million bounty on his head, was taken away by police and escorted to a residence where he now appears to be under house arrest. Four other Dawa followers were detained in the same operation.
It was unclear why Pakistan chose to take action against the group but authorities have said they were “under obligation to take some action.”
India says Dawa is a front for the militant Lashkar-e-Taiba group, which it accuses of carrying out the attacks on Mumbai in November 2008, which killed more than 160 people. India has long seethed at Pakistan’s failure either to hand over or prosecute those accused of planning the Mumbai attacks, while Pakistan has alleged that India failed to give it crucial evidence.
Islamabad briefly detained Saeed in the aftermath of the attacks but he was later released on court orders. His close aide Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, whom India says was in continuous touch with the attackers in Mumbai, was also released in 2015.