India’s cyber sleuths are tracking a user of Hushmail, a Vancouver-based encrypted e-mail service provider, who had allegedly hired a hacker to break into e-mail accounts in South Asia.

The alleged hacker from Pune has been arrested and is reportedly co-operating with India Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

CBI sources told Indian media said judicial requests seeking details of the user who hired the hacker have been sought by the agency through Letters Rogatory.

Letters rogatory are requests from courts in one country to the courts of another country requesting the performance of an act which, if done without the sanction of the foreign court, could constitute a violation of that country's sovereignty

The request includes login details, IP addresses used by the user to login and the locations from where the account was used as part of its cyber forensic evidence needed for an indictment. So far police said the user of Hushmail with e-mail id [email protected] had allegedly hired the hacker.

The alleged hacker Ankit Tiwari, 32, was arrested on a tip off from Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the United States under the violation of Information Technology Act relating to identity theft hacking and assisting in stealing information.

Tiwari was allegedly working for his clients through two websites - www.hirehacker.net and www.anonymiti.com - with servers located in the US,

He was offering to illegally access passwords of e-mail accounts in exchange for a fee varying from USD 50-200 per hacked account.

Prior to his arrest, Tiwari allegedly had hacked into 900 e-mail accounts between 2011 to 2013, of which 171 were Indians.