Surve in judicial custody till April 27

New Delhi, Apr 18 (UNI) A Special CBI court sent former Wing Commander S L Surve, one of the accused in the Naval War Room theft case, to judicial custody till April 27.

The judge also posted for tomorrow hearing on the application of two other accused -- Mukesh Jha and Vinod Kumar Jha.

A CBI court on April 13 had sent Mukesh Bajaj and Rajrani Jaiswal, arrested from Pune, and Vinod Kumar Jha, brought from Muzaffarpur to the Capital, to 14 days judicial custody till April 27.

Five persons, including three former Naval officers, were arrested by the CBI in raids at 17 places across six cities (Delhi, Mumbai, Chandigarh, Pune, Goa and Muzaffarpur) on April 6, several months after the sensational 'pilfering' of classified documents from the Naval War Room in Delhi.

Among those arrested include Lt Cdr (Retd) Kulbhushan Parashar, who was picked from the IGI Airport soon after he landed here from London on April 5. The other four arrested were former Naval Commanders Virender Rana (Delhi) and Vinod Kumar Jha (Muzaffarpur) and two civilians -- Bajaj and Jaiswal (both arrested from Pune).

In total, nine people had been accused in the case under the Official Secrets Act.

Besides the five arrested, four others named accused were Lt Cdr (Retd) Ravishankaran, Wing Cdr (Retd) S K Kohli, Ex Wing Cdr (IAF) Sambhajee L Surve and former Captain (Navy) Kashyap Kumar.

The Defence Ministry, in its FIR, had mentioned that three officers of the Indian Navy and another from the Indian Air Force alongwith retired officers and others conspired to trade-off classified documents and information which affected the security of the country.

UNI XR-AN PA KN2010