The move turns the heat on the terrorist who masterminded the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, and signals US is finally taking the Lashkar-e-Taiba seriously enough.

The heat is on Hafiz Saeed, the man who masterminded the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and heads the terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba. The man who for whom Pakistan offers secure sanctuary is now on the FBI’s most wanted list of terrorists, with a $10 million award for information leading to his capture.

US undersecretary of state Wendy Sherman, now on a tour of duty in India, told Indian officials of the news of the bounty, which is an acknowledgement that the US is finally taking the terrorist threat from the Lashkar-e-Taiba seriously.

The $10 million offer for information leading to Saeed’s capture is only second to the $25 million bounty on Al Qaeda leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri. It is a signal that the US considers the LeT – and its leader – a serious enough threat, given that the terror group’s operations, which had long been directed only at India, are cause for wider concern.

Saeed’s brother-in-law Abdul Rehman Makki, who is a financier for the LeT’s jihadi operations, too carries a bounty on his head, of $3 million.

Saeed is known to enjoy the patronage of Pakistan’s military and the ISI, and frequently addresses public meetings in Pakistani cities, spewing venom at India. Although the Pakistani government makes a show of banning the LeT – as it famously did in January 2002 – Saeed has never really faced any serious risk of arrest.

Even during the period when it was banned, the LeT operated openly through its charity front organisation, the Jamaat-ud-Dawa. He was put under house arrest briefly, but was released on orders of the Lahore High Court, which ruled that there was no evidence to connect Saeed to the Mumbai terror attacks of November 2008.

Saeed had recently joined the Difa-e-Pakistan (Defence of Pakistan) movement, which is made up of a motley group of militant groups, politicians and prominent former army officers.

India has long sought the arrest and repatriation of Saeed for trial on terrorism charges in India: he was charge-sheeted for the 26/11 attacks. But Pakistan has never heeded repeated Indian demands.

The bounty for Saeed’s capture will heighten the incentive for insiders to give out information on his whereabouts, but given that he enjoys state patronage, it’s hard to say if will eventually lead to his arrest. Indicatively, the Pakistan government has for long studiously ignored an Interpol notice for Saeed’s arrest. The Pakistani military and the ISI use him as an instrument to wage ‘proxy war’ on India, and there is no indication of a change in that mindset.

US defence secretary Leon Panetta said as much in a TV interview on Monday. He said that Pakistan considers India as a "threat", and because the US did not share that assessment, it made for a “complex” relationship between the US and Pakistan.

"It is a complex relationship. It always has been and I suspect it always will be," Panetta said. "In some ways we share a common concern and a common threat. Terrorism is as much a threat to Pakistan and the people of Pakistan as it is to us and to the people of Afghanistan," he said.

At the same time, Panetta noted, the two countries differ on the threat perception. He said while they "have common cause" "the problem" is that Pakistan views its position as "threatened by India".

"As a result of that, sometimes we get very mixed messages from Pakistan as to just exactly where they're going to be," he said.

Asked to revisit the US decision to keep the May 2011 raid on Osama bin Laden's safehouse in Abbottabad a secret, Panetta said the fear at that time was that such information could be leaked by the Pakistanis, which would have compromised the top secret mission.

"The concern we had is that...we had provided intelligence to them with regards to other areas and unfortunately, for one way or another, it got leaked to the individuals we were trying to go after," Panetta said.

"So as a result of that we were concerned that if we were going to perform a sensitive mission like this, we had to do it on our own," he underlined.

Reiterating that he has not come across anything so far which reflects a direct link between the top Pakistani leadership and the safe hideout of bin Laden, Panetta expressed concern how a compound like this would not be known to them (Pakistani establishment).

He said that although he had not found direct link or "evidence that involved a direct connection to the Pakistanis", it was a matter of "concern" how bin Laden's compound could come up in an area "where there were military establishments", and military operating and not have them know.

"The leadership within Pakistan is obviously not aware of certain things and yet people lower down in the military establishment find it very well, they've been aware of it. But bottom line is that we have not had evidence that provides that direct link," he noted.

Panetta noted that although the US had been successful in going after the al-Qaida leadership, the terror outfit continued to be a threat. "For that reason we just can't stop continuing to put pressure on them to make sure that they never again have the opportunity to attack our country," he added.