WASHINGTON - The United States is not part of any Indian investigation into the sources of internet images that caused a huge exodus of north-eastern Indians from southern cities, a State Department spokesperson has said, while distancing Washington from New Delhi's allegation of Pakistani involvement in creating the social unrest."The Indian government itself is investigating, so we're going to let that go forward," State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland told reporters on Tuesday when closely questioned by Indian journalists whether US was helping India in the probe while they were suggesting that Pakistan was somehow responsible. "No," she said categorically when asked if the US is part of the Indian investigation.At the same time, the spokesperson reminded India of its obligation to the Internet freedom as New Delhi blocked hundreds of websites following last week’s exodus, which, according to several American news reports exposed the alienation of northeastern people."We have seen these reports that north-eastern Indians are returning to the north-east from cities in southern India, and these media reports that the returns are due to concerns about personal safety”, Nuland said at the daily press briefing. “On the larger question of internet freedom, you know where we are on that issue, and we are always on the side of full freedom of the internet,” she said.“But as the Indian government continues to investigate these instances and preserve security, we also always urge the government to maintain its own commitment to human rights, fundamental freedoms, rule of law.” Asked to explain its stand on WikiLeaks in view of its professed support of full freedom of the internet, Nuland said: “WikiLeaks didn’t have to do with freedom of the internet. It had to do with the compromise of US government classified information.”The US had not asked for any investigation by the Indian government nor was it part of the investigation, Nuland added, noting that India itself has “called an investigation of some of the sources of the rumours that have caused people to start to move”. “And so we are going to obviously watch and see how that process goes forward,” she said.Asked if the US had or would ask US-based companies, including Google, Facebook, and Twitter to comply with Indian government’s directive to go after the sources of erroneous information, Nuland said she could not speak “of the conversation that those companies may or may not be having with the Indian government”.“We maintain open lines to our own companies in India, as we do around the world, and we are obviously open to consultation with them if they need it from us,” she said.Meanwhile, a report in The Washington Post, quoted an unnamed Indian official as terming the Indian move to blame others as an attempt to cover up its incompetence.While some analysts said the curbs were justified, the newspaper reported, “others said the actions were a knee-jerk response from a weak government unable to effectively assuage the concerns of its frightened citizens.“This is a government that is trying to hide its incompetence by blaming everybody but unwilling to look at itself for failure to protect its citizens,” said a government official.Still others said that by cracking down on websites and social media, the Indian government was dodging the deeper issue of the racism and alienation felt by many people from the northeastern states, who are routinely denigrated by their fellow Indians for supposedly being more Chinese or Southeast Asian in appearance. Reports say some of the images included clips of anti-Muslim violence in India.According to the Post report, the Indian government’s blame list included several US based social networks like Facebook to Pakistani websites, Twitter to text messages, and Google to YouTube videos.India also banned sending text messages to more than five people at a time for two weeks.The Post report said thousands of people from northeastern India fled several cities in the south and west of the country last week after text messages circulated warning that they faced reprisal attacks from Muslims over recent ethnic clashes in the northeastern state of Assam.