After failing to get the Pakistani government to hand over 20 people in connection with last week’s Mumbai attacks, the Indian government has tried a more targeted request of only three major suspects they believe to be involved in the attacks. The three are Tiger Memon, Dawood Ibrahim, and Masood Azher.
Memon and Ibrahim are powerful movers of an organized crime syndicate in India called D-Company, and are believed to have been involved in the 1993 bombings in Mumbai which killed 250 civilians and injured hundreds of others. Azher is the founder of Jaish-e Mohammed, a militant Kashmiri separatist organization. Azher is a Pakistani national with a background as a religious scholar, and spent a year detained by the Pakistani government in connection with a 2001 attack on the Indian parliament.
Pakistani Interior Minister Rahman Malik’s office said it was out of the question that either Memon or Ibrahim , both Indian nations, were even in Pakistan. The Pakistani government also said “no action will be taken against Masood Azher till India provides credible evidence of his involvement in the Mumbai attacks.”