New Delhi, Feb. 23: Indian investigators are upset that the foreign office allowed possible witnesses to the Samjhauta Express blasts to return to Pakistan before getting an assurance that they could be accessed again.

Sources said the Indian foreign ministry and investigating agencies could not get Pakistan foreign minister Khursheed Mehmood Kasuri to agree to keep them back for some more time or give an undertaking that they could be called to India for help with the probe.

While the talks were on, sleuths managed to take statements from some patients on the Hercules C-130, which took off after an over two-hour delay yesterday.

Two of these were recorded under Section 164 of the CrPC, which makes them admissible in court.

Among them was Rana Shaukat Ali, one of the passengers whose five children had died in the blast. The agencies persuaded him to go to Panipat to identify the bodies.

Agency sources, however, said these statements would be of no use unless the witnesses could be called to India or even questioned in Pakistan once a case is filed on the blasts.

India and Pakistan have not signed the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty, which would have made it possible to call each other’s citizens for investigation or make arrests in criminal matters.

“If this case is to be cracked, we would need help from the Pakistan government, which could relax provisions and send these persons to help with investigations,” a government official said.

“It would also be a fit case to test Pakistan’s intentions at the forthcoming meet on joint anti-terror mechanism.”