New Delhi, Dec. 4: India today fired a fresh, though familiar, salvo against the hardening Pakistani wall of denial, saying it had proof that the ISI was involved in planning last week’s terror attack on Mumbai and training the men who effected it.

Select journalists were also told in an unattributable briefing this afternoon that New Delhi refused to believe the Pakistan Army was not aware of the strike.

PTI quoted the unnamed sources as saying that the government was also aware of the names of trainers and the places where “meticulous training” took place. “The attack was planned, equipped and organised in Pakistan where the terrorists were trained and provided logistical support,” the sources said. They provided no proof to back their assertion, or even clues to the nature of evidence they had gathered, stating only that the “United States is believed to have even more evidence, some of which it has shared with India”.

India had made similar claims of Pakistani complicity in the Kabul embassy blasts but it cut no ice with Islamabad.

The US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, and the Chairman of the Joint US Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, have been on a New Delhi-Islamabad crisscross over yesterday and today, but there is no specific information on what manner of data was shared on the Mumbai attack.

While Rice was quoted from Islamabad as saying that there was “enough information available” to move on, the sources here said Admiral Mike Mullen told his Pakistani interlocutors in Islamabad that Washington had “enough evidence” to show a Pakistani hand in the attack. Mullen, who was in Delhi for high-level meetings today, said nothing to confirm or deny that.

The strictly anonymous nature of the information handed out today, and the absence of anything to back it, at once made it convenient for sceptics on both sides of the border to raise questions.

Ahmed Rashid, Lahore-based journalist and authority on al Qaida, told The Telegraph: “I do not doubt that this attack has originated in Pakistan and has Pakistani actors, but the manner of Indian revelations today, which come without any substantiation, goes down badly here. I do not think the Pakistani authorities have even been briefed yet. This is a serious situation for the whole region and whatever is said should be said responsibly and with proof. We need to know the firm truth, and world needs to know, but unless there is evidence, these remain loose allegations and are easily rebuffed by those that are happy to rebuff them.”

The retired diplomat and former high commissioner to Pakistan, G. Parthasarathy, was cryptic but duly sceptical in tone. “I think it will be unprofessional of me to comment on things that unnamed sources have said, if there is evidence let it be brought forth,” he said.

But another retired diplomat, who wouldn’t be named, was more cautious and understanding of the manner in which New Delhi had upped the ante. “Often it is not wise to make such evidence public, because then all manner of public pressure begins to mount,” he said. “And giving out unattributable material is something all governments do in such delicate situations. Perhaps this is a warning shot in what New Delhi understands to be a long-drawn affair. I am sure, for instance, we have shared much more with Rice than has been given out to the media.”

That New Delhi might be playing out a more finely calibrated strategy than mere conventional trading of charges is probably evident from the way it has sought to make a distinction between the Asif Ali Zardari-led civilian government and the Pakistani military-intelligence complex.

“We do not believe that the civilian government in Pakistan is involved in the attack,” the sources were quoted as saying. “In fact, one view is that the civilian government itself may be a target of the strike which may be used by the army to heighten tensions with India to return to power.”

This splintered view of the Pakistani establishment was sought to be supported on two counts --- Pakistan’s quick U-turn on the decision to dispatch the ISI chief to New Delhi in the immediate aftermath of the terror attack, and the sudden evacuation home of Pakistan’s foreign minister, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, in a specially flown military aircraft.

When the terror attack took place, Qureshi was in India and had consciously decided not to cut short his visit. However, the Indian government was told at 2:30am that a special aircraft was being sent in less than four hours to fly him back; Qureshi left at 7 in the morning on the Pakistan army chief’s plane. This is being seen by New Delhi as a “clear message from the Pakistani army to the civilian government”.

On their part, though, the Pakistani establishment isn’t betraying any signs of a civilian-military schism, and unanimously refusing to countenance Indian allegations. What has probably helped their stone-walling is the fact that since the attacks, there have been several unsourced media leaks, most of them yet unsubstantiated and several of them contrary.

Today, for instance, the sources told the media that contrary to “versions” that the terrorists had used a fishing boat to reach Mumbai after sailing from Karachi, “more sophisticated means were used”. This leaves the entire sequence of events related to the use of the fishing boat Kuber and its slain captain --- a version given by the security agencies, none else --- muddied and sheds little light on what may have been the terrorists’ mode of arrival.