Islamabad: Pakistani authorities on Tuesday strongly denied the arrest of Dawood Ibrahim, one of India's most wanted criminals, in its southern city of Quetta, capital of Balochistan province bordering Afghanistan.
The denial followed a report in the Times of India claiming the arrest of the mastermind of 1993 Bombay blasts by the Pakistani security agencies in Quetta.
"It is absolutely wrong," a top Interior Ministry official Brigaider Javed Cheema told Gulf News.
Cheema, who heads a National Crisis Management Cell at the ministry, reiterated oft-stated stand of the government and Dawood Ibrahim was not in Pakistan. "He is not in Pakistan," the official said.
Ibrahim was on a list of 20 people India had handed over to Pakistan in the past during bilateral counter-terrorism talks. Islamabad has always maintained that the man was not on its territory.
The two countries have set up a joint anti-terrorism group within the framework of their ongoing peace dialogue launched in early 2004 with the aim of resolving all outstanding issues, including the decades old Kashmir dispute.
Cheema said in the past, the Indians had wrongly made claims about presence of Dawood in Pakistan.
