India, Italy negotiate legal assistance treaty

India and Italy are finetuning a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty that would help the two countries obtain formal assistance in investigation related to criminal cases. Though the two countries have held two rounds of negotiation, the final agreement is said to be stuck amid concerns that maximum punishment for heinous crimes in India is “death penalty,” while capital punishment has been abolished in Italy. According to the Ministry of Home Affairs, “Mutual Legal Assistance is a mechanism whereby countries cooperate with one another in order to provide and obtain formal assistance in prevention, suppression, investigation and prosecution of crime to ensure that the criminals do not escape or sabotage the due process of law for want of evidence available in different countries.” While India has so far signed MLAT with 45 countries, India and Italy do not have a bilateral agreement on criminal matters so far. The investigating agencies probing the 2013 Agusta Westland chopper scam had to face multiple hurdles when Italy refused to extradite Carlo Gerosa, one of the three middlemen wanted by the Central Bureau of Investigation.