Court denies bail to two accused in Navy war room leak case

New Delhi, Apr 21 (UNI) A city court today rejected the bail plea of two of the accused in the Navy war room leak case.

Chief Metropolitan Magistrate (CMM) Seema Maini denied bail to Vinod Kumar Jha and Mukesh Bajaj.

On April 19, the court had sent two other accused -- Kulbushan Parashar and Virender Rana-- to judicial custody for nine days.

The court had also ordered that the proceedings of the case will take place in camera and documents relating to the case will not be made public.

On April 18, special CBI court sent former Wing Commander S L Surve, another accused in the case, to judicial custody till April 27.

A CBI court on April 13 had sent Bajaj and Rajrani Jaiswal, arrested from Pune, and Jha, brought from Muzaffarpur to the Capital, to 14-day judicial custody.

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 have 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 along with retired officers and others conspired to trade off classified documents and information which affected the security of the country.

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