(AKI) - India should demand the arrest of Pakistani extremist leader, Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, over the brutal Mumbai terror attacks, an Indian defence expert said on Tuesday. Alok Bansal, from the Institute for Defence Studies & Analysis in New Delhi, also said India should strike the group's training camps in Kashmir if there was concrete proof of their role in Mumbai and if Pakistan failed to cooperate with Indian police.Hafiz Muhammad Saeed is the head of the Islamic wahabi fundamentalist group, Jama'at-ud-Da'wah, that spawned Lashkar-e-Toiba. Speaking in an interview with the Italian daily, Il Sole 24 Ore, Bansal said it was important for the Indian government to show that was not "impotent" in the face of terrorist attacks.
India has asked Pakistan to hand over 20 top fugitives amid heightened tensions between the two nuclear-armed nations since the attacks. Pakistan said it would "frame a formal response" once it received the list of names.
Bansal said the terrorists had moved around Mumbai because they had prepared their plans with great care. "They had been trained and armed well and the fact that they moved around a crowded city like Mumbai was an advantage," he said. "If you have no fear of death and you want to create the greatest possible number of victims, there are endless possibilities."
Bansal said Pakistan's spy agency, Interservices Intelligence (ISI) had given Lashkar-e-Toiba financial support because it furthered Islamabad's objectives in Kashmir.
He said the security situation in Pakistan was of serious concern particularly because the Taliban had moved their military bases into the tribal regions inside Pakistan. "Now the offensive by the US and Islamabad's army in the tribal regions are pushing militants more to the east," he said. "With this step, there is a risk they will arrive in the Punjab, in the heart of the country."
Bansal, a former naval officer with 26 years of service in the Indian Navy, specialises in internal disorder in Pakistan. Now based at the New Delhi think-tank, he has edited two books and published a number of research papers and writes extensively for Indian, Pakistani and international newspapers and websites.
Bansal said better coordination was needed between Indian intelligence agencies. "For too long this sector has not received the attention it deserves," he said.