New Delhi, Feb 22: In a bid to have an iron grip over instances of terror activities planned on the internet, major internet content providers Yahoo, Gmail and others were asked to route all emails accessed in India through servers located in the country. This applies to even those mail accounts registered outside the country.

The matter was highlighted when security agencies were unable to have real-time access to some emails that was registered outside the country but were opened in India.

During a high-level meeting that was attended by Union Home Secretary R.K. Singh, the issue was raked up and the Department of Information Technology (DIT) was asked to take up the matter on a priority basis with the content providers.

The minutes of the meeting quoted the director general from CERT.in as stating that Yahoo automatically locates all email accounts registered in India to the server in India. However, the accounts registered outside India that was being accessed in India are routed through servers outside India.

The urgency of the matter was felt when the security agencies failed to access accounts of suspected terrorists of Indian Mujahideen during the surveillance period as the accounts were opened in a European country.

As per official sources when the content providers were approached in order to see the mails, the officials were told that a request needs to be placed with a European nation where the server was based.