A high-ranking Indian police official says a Pakistani militant group called Lashkar-e-Taiba is behind the Mumbai terrorist attacks that killed at least 174 people, including two Canadians.
The only gunman captured by police, identified as Ajmal Qasab, has told authorities that he was a member of the group, according to Joint Police Commissioner Rakesh Maria.
"Ajmal Qasab has received training in an L-e-T training camp in Pakistan," Maria said Sunday, using the group's acronym. "Our interrogation indicates that the terrorists had other places that they also intended to target."
A Pakistani official responded by demanding that India provide evidence to support the claims.
"This is only an allegation. We have demanded evidence of the complicity of any Pakistani group," said Farhatullah Babar, a spokesman for President Asif Ali Zardari. "We will take the strictest action against any group or individual ... if India provides us the evidence."
Indian authorities have said 10 gunmen were involved in the attacks and all but the one in custody were killed.
According to The Associated Press, a U.S. counter-terrorism official had suggested some "signatures of the attacks" were consistent with Lashkar and another group, Jaish-e-Mohammed, thought to be based in Kashmir.
Some experts say Lashkar was created by the Pakistani intelligence service to wage a clandestine war against India over Kashmir.
Pakistan banned Lashkar in 2002, a year after both the United States and Britain branded the group a terrorist organization.
Officials believe that the group was re-established under a new name, Jamaat-ud-Dawa.
In 2006, the U.S. State Department labelled Jamaat-ud-Dawa a terrorist organization on the grounds it was an alias of Lashkar-e-Taiba.
A spokesperson for Jamaat-ud-Dawa condemned the Mumbai attacks and refuted any link to Lashkar.
Meanwhile, India's top security official resigned on Sunday in the wake of the violence.
Home Minister Shivraj Patil, who had been under fire even prior to the deadly Mumbai terror attacks, offered to resign from his position early Sunday.
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh accepted Patil's offer several hours later, the Press Trust of India reported Sunday.
Patil had become an unpopular figure after a long series of terror attacks occurred across the country under his watch.
He was replaced by Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram.
While people in Mumbai struggled to get their lives back to normal, officials were still searching parts of the city's historic Taj Mahal hotel on Sunday, looking for any remaining victims.
The attacks in Mumbai ended Saturday, after Indian commandos killed the final three of 10 gunmen who terrorized the city for three straight days.
Attacks at 10 different sites killed scores of people and wounded more than 200 others.
Eighteen foreigners were killed including two Canadians, six Americans, as well as people from Britain, Italy, Japan, China, Thailand, Australia and Singapore.
While Indian officials downgraded the official death toll Sunday to 174 after realizing some bodies were counted twice, it is possible that the number will rise again after the Taj Mahal search has been completed.
The final three gunmen died in a bloody last stand at the Taj Mahal, which on Sunday had boarded-up windows and remained fenced off from the public.
The gunmen were highly-trained, police have said, and used GPS devices, as well as mobile and satellite phones to communicate with one another during their attacks.
"Whenever they were under a bit of pressure, they would hurl a grenade," said J.K. Dutt, director general of India's elite commando unit. "They freely used grenades."
It is believed the gunmen may have arrived in Mumbai by fishing trawler -- a theory that has been backed up by the discovery of an abandoned vessel that was found with a bound corpse on board, a day after the attacks started.
With files from The Associated Press
