Indian intelligence blunder sparks anger in Pakistan, joked at home

NEW DELHI - intelligence agency of India has provoked outrage in Pakistan and self-deprecating jokes at home this week after scoring ordinary Pakistani merchants as terrorists on a mission to attack some of the leading institutions of India.

The Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), agency of India's premier intelligence, issued a notice to state governments in which he stated that five trained militants from Pakistan has banned Lashkar-i-Taiba group had slipped in India with false identities to attack a nuclear plant, oil refinery, port, and the Defence Academy.

On Wednesday, a day after U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton left New Delhi after giving some tough comments on Pakistan, the Mumbai police released photographs of five men.

Within hours, a Pakistani television channel reported that two of the three men on the list were traders and one was a keeper, all living in Lahore, and none of them had never left Pakistan.

"Blunders India while Pakistan laughs," the newspaper Mail Today, the embarrassing gaffe. Twitter buzz with jokes about the Research and Analysis Wing, with some tweeters offering their own lists to the agency.

The incident prompted anger and derision in Pakistan. Muhammad Fayyaz Butt, the head of a shopkeepers' association for the electronics market where the two men own stores, India has condemned "irresponsible and biased."

On Thursday, the two traders went to the Lahore High Court, seeking protection against a possible action against them by India.

Indian Law Minister Salman Khurshid offered an explanation to reporters in New Delhi on Friday. "We can not be too careful," he said. "We had some bad experiences in the past. And so to err on the right side is something we can not complain."

It was not the first time India has made such a blunder. A year ago, the government published a list of 50 most wanted fugitives Indian, she said, were hiding in Pakistan. Two men on the list turned out to be in India, one of them a prisoner in a jail in Mumbai.