"I have checked myself. His (Ajmal Amir Iman alias Ajmal Kasab) house and village has been cordoned off by the security agencies. His parents are not allowed to meet anybody. I don't undertand why it has been done," Shraif, who hails from Punjab, said in an interview to ‘Geo News’ channel.

"The people and media should be allowed to meet Iman's parents so that the truth could come out in the open," he said, adding that "We need some kind of introspection."

Zardari, who earlier acknowledged that the perpetrators of the Mumbai carnage could be 'non-state' actors from Pakistan, has now said there is still no "real evidence" that the terrorists who attacked Mumbai came from Pakistan.

"Have you seen any evidence to that effect. I have definitely not seen any real evidence to that effect," Zardari told BBC in an interview earlier this week.

Pakistani security agencies and local officials in Faridkot have launched a cover-up since India made it public that Kasab belonged to the village in Punjab province and his father acknowledged to a Pakistani newspaper that the gunman captured in India was his son.

Sharif also slammed President Zardari's rule, saying the functioning of the current Pakistan People's Party-led government is making Pakistan look like a "failed state". Pakistan presents the picture of a failed and ungovernable state due to the absence of the government's writ and the country urgently needs a new roadmap to pull it out of the problems it is currently facing, he said.

Kasab has told Indian investigators that he belongs to Faridkot village of Okara district in Pakistan's Punjab province and that he was trained by the Lashker-e-Taiba to carry out the attacks. Iman's father Amir Kasab too had admitted that the gunman in pictures beamed by the world media is his son.

Sharif said if Iman was not involved in the Mumbai attacks, why was Faridkot village being cordoned off by security agencies and the media prevented from going there.

If Iman was "involved in any way, despite that his parents should be allowed to speak out and say the boy has been (away from home) for three or four months or one or two years and we are also very worried about him", Sharif said.

He also asked why people and journalists were being barred from meeting Iman's parents and other residents of Faridkot.

Pakistani security agencies and local officials in Faridkot have launched an apparent cover-up operation since Indian investigators revealed he belonged to the village.

Iman's parents have reportedly been shifted from the village and local officials have claimed no youth named Ajmal Kasab had lived in Faridkot.