India has asked the United States for more information on the recent indictment of an Indian suspected of violating American export control laws to ship prohibitive items to official Indian agencies.

"We have seen reports and we saw an indictment," Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon told reporters at the Indian embassy in Washington when asked to comment on the implications.

"It is not two Indian nationals, it is one Indian national. And we actually asked today of the United States for information. We would like to know what is there," Menon said.

"If there is something we should be looking at investigating, we'd like to get to the bottom of it. So we actually asked for information and we are hoping to get it," he added.

The US Justice Department has charged that agencies of the Indian government participated in a conspiracy to sidestep US export regulations and obtain secret weapons technology from American companies over several years.

The indictment goes on to slap charges against an electronics firm, Cirrus Inc, operating in Singapore, South Carolina and Bangalore, of working as an agent of the Indian government to obtain sensitive missile and weapons technology for its military programmes.

Four of the company officials including the founder Parthasarathy Sudarshan were charged.

The indictment also has a number of unidentified co-conspirators including an official of the Indian mission in Washington.