New Delhi: India on Wednesday insisted that US must provide a direct access to its investigators to interrogate Pakistani-American David Headley, who has confessed to plotting the Mumbai terror attacks.
"One day or the other, (the) US will have to agree and expedite the issue that Headley will have to undergo interrogation by our agencies", Union Law Minister M Veerappa Moily told reporters, a day after Washington said no decision has been taken to this effect.
Asked if the US denying access to Indian investigators is "unfair" and "unjustified" as the Indian government had allowed the FBI to interrogate gunman Ajmal Kasab in Mumbai, he said "we don't want to pass a value judgment on their policy and matter".
"But this is a matter we need to hard press our argument and you know we have a strong bargaining and tell them (the US) what's necessary...we have to make a strong case which we have already made out. Here (Mumbai attacks) he (Headley) is involved, he is really involved," Moily said.
Four days after US Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia Robert Blake publicly stated in Delhi that Indian investigators would have an access to Headley, US Ambassador Timothy J Roemer in a statement on Tuesday said "no decision on direct access for India to David Headley has been made."
Sources in the Home Ministry had said on Monday India is likely to send a team of investigators in April to question 49-year-old Headley.
No U-turn: Chidambaram
Home Minister P Chidambaram has said that he does not think there has been a "turn around" by the US on the issue of Indian investigators getting direct access to Headley.
"No, I don't think so," he shot back when asked whether there was a turn around by the US after its envoy in New Delhi Timothy J Roemer said that "no decision on direct access for India to David Headley has been made."
"... If you reflect more carefully that sentence (of Roemer) no way (it) contradicts what the US Attorney General (Eric Holder) has told me," Chidambaram, who is here on an official visit, told a TV news channel.
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