PH, India make progress on anticrime pacts

The Philippines and India have made “significant progress” in establishing treaties on transferring convicted persons and mutual legal assistance in criminal matters. According to the Department of Justice (DOJ), “only a few issues (need) to be threshed out” as delegations from the two countries met in Manila last week. It stressed that the proposed Treaty on Transfer of Sentenced Persons (TTSP) and Treaty on Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters (MLA) will “complement the Treaty on Extradition between the Philippines and India, signed in 2004.” The DOJ explained that TTSP allows citizens convicted of crimes in another country to serve their remaining sentence in their own countries. On the other hand, MLA is the process by which a state conducting an investigation or prosecution of criminal cases or related proceedings requests legal assistance from another state, the most common of which includes obtaining evidence or taking voluntary statements from persons, confiscation or forfeiture of property or proceeds of crime, the DOJ explained. —TINA G. SANTOS