NEW DELHI/MUMBAI, 22 February 2007 — Indian investigators are looking into a suspicious phone call made to Pakistani Kashmir just after bombs on a train bound for Pakistan killed 68 people, an official said yesterday, but Kashmiri militants denied any role.

The governments of both countries have blamed the fire-bomb attack on extremists trying to undermine the peace process between the nuclear-armed rivals.

Even though most of the victims were Pakistanis, Indian police say extremists are prime suspects.

And intelligence agencies seem to think that a phone call from Delhi to Pakistani Kashmir just after the attack could provide an important lead.

The Times of India newspaper quoted a Home Ministry official yesterday as saying the call had been recorded and could hold “the key to the entire puzzle.”

“Yes, a call was made and it is a vital link,” an official from India’s Intelligence Bureau, told Reuters.

Yesterday, the focus of the investigation moved to the teeming streets of Old Delhi. Police believe the suitcases could have been bought there before being loaded on the train, and said they were questioning shopkeepers.

“We are also examining the video recordings of the close-circuit television at the Old Delhi railway station, though the visuals are not of good quality,” a senior police officer said, on condition of anonymity.

“The pattern points to terrorists. No other group has the capability of a well-planned operation like this,” he added.

In the state of Haryana where the bombs exploded, senior police inspector R.C. Mishra said his team was trying to find out which militant group could have been behind the attack but had not yet pinned anything down.

In Kashmir, militants vehemently denied any role. “We strongly condemn the attack on innocent people,” the United Jihad Council (UJC), a Pakistan-based alliance of Kashmiri militant groups, said in a statement. “Our fight is against the Indian government and not against innocent civilians,” it said. “Our target is Indian security forces and our aim is liberation.”

Suspicion in India after such attacks usually falls on the Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, which is not part of the mainly Kashmiri UJC and is seen as promoting a more hard-line agenda.

But a caller identifying himself as Abdullah Gaznavi, a spokesman for Lashkar, told Reuters in Kashmir that his group was not responsible.

“The claims by Indian police that mujahedeen are behind the blasts is malicious propaganda aimed at maligning the image of mujahedeen,” he said.

“This brutal act is the handiwork of Indian agencies, Hindu hard-liners including Shiv Sena,” he said, referring to a Hindu-nationalist political party.

But Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray dismissed reports about the involvement of Hindu extremists in the blasts as propaganda. “I can confidently say that no Hindu or Sena activist was involved in the blasts.”

Speaking to journalists at his residence in Mumbai, Thackeray said he was against making friendship with Pakistan and added that there was no need for the Indian government to give so much importance to an enemy country.

Meanwhile, a team of the Maharashtra police Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) held talks in Panipat with their Haryana state counterparts over the train bomb blasts.

The team headed by Additional Commissioner of Police Dr. Paramvar Singh visited the blast site to find out whether the serial train blasts in Mumbai on July 11, last year were in any way linked to the Samjhauta Train blasts.