NEW DELHI, March 13: The heads of federal investigative agencies of India and Pakistan are to meet here after 17 years on March 21, and officials say discussions would mainly focus on ways to help each other check organised crime, the Indian Express said on Monday.

India’s Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) had last held a meeting in 1989 in Islamabad.

Now they are to “try and help each other in sensitive areas of criminal investigation, human trafficking and organized crime,” the Express said.

Scheduled for March 21-22, Pakistan’s four-member delegation would be headed by FIA’s Director-General Tariq Parvez. He is also expected to visit his ancestral villages in Jalandhar and Hoshiarpur.

“While CBI officials did not comment on whether the issue of persons wanted in CBI cases like the Mumbai bomb blasts and who are believed to be in Pakistan would be taken up during the conference,” Indian foreign ministry officials said. India’s list of “wanted men” could well be taken up, according to the Express.

CBI Director Vijay Shankar said cooperation would focus on organised crime, cyber crime, human trafficking, smuggling and narcotics.

“The visit is path-breaking,” the newspaper quoted Shankar as saying. “It is the first such contact between the two agencies since 1989. That year, a senior CBI official (and later Director) A.P. Mukherjee visited Pakistan. We will be picking up the threads from there.”

The meeting was fixed last August when Indian Home Secretary V.K. Duggal met his counterpart Syed Kamal Shah.