The Taliban has threatened revenge unless India returns the body of a Pakistani man executed for his role in the 2008 Mumbai attacks that killed 166 people.
Mohammed Ajmal Kasab’s body must be given back to his family or handed over to the Taliban, it said.
“If his body is not given to us or his family, we will, God willing, carry on his mission,” Pakistani Taliban spokesman Ahsanullah Ahsan Ahsan told The Associated Press by telephone.
“We will take revenge for his murder.” India secretly hanged Mohammed Ajmal Kasab yesterday and buried his body at the jail in the city of Pune where he was executed.
Indian external affairs minister Salman Khurshid has said the government would consider any request from the Pakistani government or Kasab’s family to hand over his body, but no such request had been received.
Kasab was the lone surviving gunman from the three-day attack in Mumbai, India’s financial capital, which targeted two luxury hotels, a Jewish centre, a tourist restaurant and a crowded train station. The nine other gunmen were killed during the siege.
Kasab was sentenced to death for waging war against India, murder and terrorism, among other charges. He confessed that the Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba was behind the Mumbai attack.