NEW DELHI, Apr 27: Delhi Police today told a court here that offence committed in the Petroleum Ministry documents leak case was covered under the Official Secrets Act (OSA) and inquiry on this aspect was underway.
Opposing the bail plea of Jubilant Energy’s official Subhash Chandra, who along with 12 others, has been chargesheeted in the case, police said that he was in unauthorised possession of six sets of documents recovered from him.
“He (Chandra) was not authorised to possess any of these documents. He should not be having possession of any of these documents. These documents were not in public domain,” the prosecutor said.
He said, “it is an offence under the OSA but it has not yet been slapped. The inquiry is going on”.
During arguments, the counsel appearing for Chandra said the charge sheet says that no secret documents have been recovered from the possession of his client, who has been in custody for over two months.
The defence counsel also said that charge sheet has already been filed and no mobile phone or laptop of his client was seized by the police during investigation.
The prosecutor countered his submissions saying there were around 50 telephone calls between Chandra and co-accused Lalta Prasad during March 1, 2014 to February 17, 2015.
He said that investigation is going on as to how these documents were used by Chandra and his firm and mobiles and laptops of senior officials of Jubilant Energy have been seized and have been sent for forensic examination.
Additional Sessions Judge Raj Kapoor has reserved the order on Chandra’s bail plea for April 30.
The court, which was scheduled to hear the arguments on the bail pleas of four other corporate executives and another co-accused in the case, adjourned hearing on their pleas to April 29 after their counsel sought adjournment on the ground that lawyers’ body are observing strike.
Lawyers in district courts are observing strike till tomorrow against the delay in tabling in Parliament an amended bill regarding enhancement of pecuniary jurisdiction of trial courts.
Besides Chandra, the bail pleas of Shailesh Saxena of
Reliance Industries Ltd, Vinay Kumar of Essar, Rishi Anand of Reliance ADAG, Cairns India’s K K Nayak besides Virender, is pending before the sessions court.
The bail pleas of these five corporate executives were earlier dismissed by the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate.
Crime Branch of Delhi Police has chargesheeted 13 arrested accused, including these six, in the case.
Earlier, the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas (MoPNG) had informed the court that eight documents recovered from the accused in the case were classified in nature and none of these were in public domain.
The Crime Branch has chargesheeted the 13 accused in the case for alleged offences under various sections of IPC including 457 (trespass), 380 (theft), 420 (cheating), 468 (forgery for the purpose of cheating), 471 (using as genuine forged documents) read with 120-B(criminal conspiracy).
On February 20, police had arrested the five corporate executives alleging that they used to procure classified documents from other arrested accused Lalta Prasad and Rakesh Kumar and used to pay them.
The documents were then supplied to the firms by these officials for their benefit, the police had alleged.
Besides them, the police had also arrested Prayas Jain, journalist Shantanu Saikia, Ishwar Singh, Asharam and Rajkumar Chaubey who are also in judicial custody.
A total of 16 people have been arrested in connection with two separate FIRs lodged by the police. (PTI)
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