Police chiefs are setting up two centres in Kashmir to catch suspected criminals coming into or going out of Bradford.

The two centres, planned for Muzaffarabad and Mirpur, will boost existing links between the West Yorkshire force and Azad Jammu and Kashmir Police (AJK) through improved information technology and video conferencing.

Bradford's community and racial relations officer Inspector Martin Baines said: "There is big movement between Bradford and Mirpur and about 50,000 people from Bradford's Pakistan community originate from Mirpur.

"The resource centres will be places where we can have video conferencing and use information technology to enable our communications to be smoother.

"This will help us to complete enquiries more quickly. Communications between the two are difficult at the moment and using just a phone and fax machine slows things down"

At least two Bradford officers will join a team from West Yorkshire Police when they visit the region next year to train officers in Kashmir, after the Pakistan Police Reform Agenda set up a new Investigation Bureau.

"This includes women who will be looking at offences involved with forced marriages," said Insp Baines.

"We will be helping to train them in scenes of crime techniques.

"They have never had investigators before and it's a new job. We are trying to help them train their force into a service which is more public-service orientated."

Bradford police currently deal with about 200 cases a year of forced marriages.

The Foreign Office has funded projects between the two forces in the past and the West Yorkshire force hopes to secure its backing for the resource centres and training programmes.

West Yorkshire Police has pioneered links with police in Pakistan and India for several years. Links enable both forces to investigate a range of crimes from murder investigations to tracing missing people.

Inspector Baines said: "The links were set up to look at trans-national crime - for example, people who commit crime here and flee over there and vice versa.

"There is no extradition agreement between the UK and Pakistan but there is a lot we can do practically, such as share intelligence and track witnesses who sometimes move between the two.

"The concept is co-operation to make these two places safer.

"The Pakistani and Kashmiri community in Bradford have been very supportive of this work and it has had a significant impact on our relationship with them.

"All the work we have done has been ground-breaking in Pakistan."