KARACHI (AFP) — Pakistan's naval chief Noman Bashir on Friday denied that Ajmal Kasab, the lone surviving alleged gunmen in the Mumbai attacks, entered India from Pakistani territorial waters.
New Delhi blamed the attacks, which killed 165 people last November, on the Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and the siege soured a five-year peace process between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan.
"We have no evidence whatsoever that Ajmal Kasab had gone to India from Pakistani territorial waters," Bashir told reporters in the port city of Karachi.
He was speaking one day after the top foreign ministry civil servants from India and Pakistan met in Colombo for the first time since the Mumbai attacks and agreed to keep the official channels of communication open.
"The Indian navy is much larger than ours and if Ajmal Kasab had gone from here then what were their coastguards doing and why they did not stop the terrorists?" said the naval commander.
Bashir declined to make further comment.
"There are many questions about the Mumbai attacks which need to be answered and until then we cannot make any comment," he said.
Indian police have charged Pakistan's Mohammed Ajmal Amir Iman -- also known as Kasab -- with murder and "waging war against India".
Kasab was the only alleged member of the 10-man Islamist commando-style unit captured alive during the November 26-29 siege.
Pakistani foreign office spokesman Abdul Basit said in Islamabad on Thursday that investigators from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) were due to visit Pakistan on March 4 to help investigate the Mumbai attacks.
FBI director Robert Mueller will head the team, which Basit hoped would "assist Pakistani officials by providing further intelligence information".
Both LeT and Pakistan have denied any involvement in the attacks but the government in Islamabad admitted this month for the first time that the strikes were partly planned on its soil.
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