Police have drafted retired officers to help investigate the Mumbai train bombings as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh insisted Pakistan must stop militants from launching attacks in India.
Police have yet to make arrests amid few signs of a breakthrough in the inquiry but said they had identified two suspects in the July 11 bombings that left 182 dead and nearly 900 wounded.
President Abdul Kalam will lead a two-minute period of silence in the city today to coincide with the first of the seven coordinated blasts targeting first-class compartments on Mumbai's vital commuter railway link.
Officials want drivers to stop their cars and people to leave flowers outside railway stations to mark the first week since the blasts that occured within 15 minutes from 6:25pm.
The blasts, the worst such attack in India for 13 years, have prompted sharp exchanges between Pakistan and India. New Delhi has suggested the bombers had support from across the border, a claim denied by Islamabad.
Investigators said the attacks bore the hallmarks of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a group fighting Indian rule in Kashmir, which was being scrutinized along with Mumbai-based Islamic militants.
However conflicting reports emerged over the type of explosive used in the blasts, with tests continuing that could help identify the group behind the attacks. Police said on Sunday that they were still looking at many groups.
Singh told reporters on Sunday there had to be "firm commitment" that Pakistani territory was not used to support terrorist acts against India.
"But the commitment has to be backed by action on the ground," Singh told reporters travelling with him to the Group of Eight summit in Saint Petersburg.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz said that India had not responded to Islamabad's offer of help into the Mumbai blasts inquiry.
"If they need help, we will cooperate. They haven't [asked for help]," he told the Financial Times in an interview published yesterday, and urged India to carry on with a two-year peace process between the nuclear-armed neighbors.
Nearly 300 people remained in hospitals yesterday, police said, with the death toll rising by one on Sunday to 182.
One body, believed to be that of a man in his 50s, remained unclaimed, with officials still hoping the family would come forward.
"As this is a blast victim, we're not following the usual protocol which is cremating the remains after 72 hours," Sion hospital chief executive Anil More told the Midday newspaper.
Indian officials insisted police were making headway in their investigation despite continued media criticism yesterday.
"More police, more suspects, no headway," said a headline in the Hindustan Times.
Retired officers and a high-profile officer who led a squad of armed policemen tackling criminal gangs have been drafted into the inquiry, said Maharashtra state chief secretary D.K. Sankaran.
"The whole lot of almost all intelligence officials in Maharashtra, Mumbai police, large-scale support from the government of India and retired officers are involved," he said.
Little has emerged from a trawl of hundreds of "troublemakers" in and around Mumbai. Anti-terrorist police declined to name the two suspects they were looking at but added that many people remained under the scanner.
"We're trying our best. They're not just petty criminals or car thieves. I can understand their impatience," additional commissioner of police Jayjit Singh told reporters.
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