New Delhi: The US has provided "substantial assistance" to India in the investigations into the Pathankot terror attack, the American embassy said on Thursday. The US Department of Justice and the FBI will also extend assistance to Indian investigators and prosecutors as to how to request for evidence from America under Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty.
"The MLAT workshop will take place in Mumbai, India, over a two-day span, and will focus on case-specific requests in order to expedite India's demand for evidence located in the US for use in Indian-based investigations," a statement by the US Embassy here said.
The MLAT workshop is part of a greater effort by the US and Indian law enforcement officials to increase cooperation and information sharing, it said. "Most recently, the Department of Justice and the FBI Office of Legal Attache have provided substantial assistance to the Government of India in the ongoing investigation into the attack at Pathankot Airbase in early January 2016," the statement said.
The workshop is being held in partnership with the Home Ministry and the Mumbai Police. Organized through the US Embassy's FBI Office of Legal Attache, and the Department of Justice's Office of International Affairs, the two-day event will give Indian prosecutors and investigators an opportunity to work with their DOJ and FBI counterparts and learn best practices for requesting for evidence from the US.
The event will also showcase some of the FBI's current investigative techniques used domestically for securing digital evidence in ongoing investigations. "With the growing use of the internet by terrorists for operational planning and recruitment, Indian law enforcement has been at the forefront in anticipating and neutralizing these threats," FBI Legal Attache Ashish L Sawkar said.
He added that the workshop will serve to provide Indian counterparts with direct access to the attorneys at the Department of Justice, who will execute their requests for digital evidence in support of extremely important efforts in India to counter these online threats.
"It will also provide recent best practices utilized by our prosecutors and investigators in the US on how to obtain evidence from US-based internet service providers and social media companies," he said.
