Sleuths tap America to crack Delhi blast case

With no conclusive leads more than 72 hours after the Delhi high court bombing, New Delhi has exchanged notes with Washington on whether US intelligence has picked up any signal or communication, particularly from the sub-continent, that could provide a breakthrough in the case.

Under the aegis of bilateral counter-terror cooperation, Indian security agencies are in touch with both US and western intelligence agencies to investigate whether the attack had origins outside the country or involved homegrown terror groups.

During US secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s visit to India in July, Indian intelligence chiefs had interacted in detail with visiting US national intelligence director James Clapper on homegrown terror.

Official sources said that under the institutionalised channel between Indian and American intelligence agencies, the two countries are trawling through data on signal intelligence, communication intercepts, known terrorists and their sympathisers to bring the perpetrators of the high court attack to book.

American agencies are helping India trace the IP address of the four emails claiming responsibility for the attack through Google and Yahoo internet companies. However, despite the large American footprint in the sub-continent, officials said that till now there is no technical input to suggest the bombing was either staged or carried out by foreign or local terrorists.

Sources said it was due to the robust bilateral cooperation on counter-terror that the two sides regularly peep into each other’s databanks to neutralise threats emanating particularly from Pakistan-Afghanistan. While the US is looking for cooperation to target terrorist groups like the Lashkar-e-Taiba and al Qaeda, India is interested in details given out by Lashkar terrorists recently arrested in the US.