US discreetly contacts Delhi Police officers

NEW DELHI - A US embassy cable from here says it often discreetly contacts Delhi Police officers to get information about terror investigations.

The cable is one of many leaked by WikiLeaks and published in the Guardian newspaper.

A cable dated April 18, 2006 said the Regional Security Office (RSO) of the embassy sends a “majority of threat information investigative requests to the New Delhi Police Department’s Special Cell”.

However, it says “as with all investigative efforts in India, the office is only as good as its local contacts.

“The RSO often has greater success by discreetly contacting a local officer in the Special Cell in lieu of sending in an official request, many of which are not acted upon,” said the cable.

The cable added that the RSO “receives very little follow-up information from Delhi Police after a terrorist attack” such as the status of police investigation or efforts to apprehend suspects.

“The information RSO does receive is usually already available in the media,” it said.

The RSO found that the “sharing of tactical threat information with Delhi police is woefully lacking”.

A subsequent cable says India’s “lack of a national crime database” seriously inhibits cooperation among the states and between states and the federal security services, including the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Intelligence Bureau, and “allows terrorists to potentially take advantage of crossing from one jurisdiction to another to escape detection and broaden their attack patterns”.