Some documents secret, confidential: Charge sheet in leak case

New Delhi, Apr 20: Some documents seized from the various accused arrested in connection with the petroleum ministry document leak case were secret and confidential in nature and not a single documents was in public domain, Delhi Police has said in its charge sheet.

Delhi Police filed a charge sheet against 13 accused in the case on Saturday under various offence dealing with cheating, forgery, trespass, theft, common intent and criminal conspiracy. The charge sheet was accepted by a Delhi court on Monday.

"As per the report of ministry of petroleum and natural gas (MoPNG) the documents recovered from the accused persons are not in public domain and some of the documents are marked as secret or confidential in nature," said the police in its charge sheet.

Eighty sets of photocopy of documents related to MoPNG were recovered from accused former journalist Santanu Saikia, who now runs a web portal, of which 23 documents were marked as secret or confidential in nature, police said in its charge sheet.

Police recovered 80 set of photocopy of documents from RIL corporate affairs manager Shailesh Saxena but only one document was found to be secret in nature.

Seven sets of documents were recovered from Prayas Jain, a Melbourne-based energy consultant and police said that six were secret and confidential while two out of nine documents recovered from Cairns India general manager K.K. Nayak were secret or confidential in nature.

The provisions of the stringent Official Secrets Act have not been invoked against the accused but investigation is still on in the case.

Police said that recovered documents were vital, sensitive and incriminating.

Police have also recovered documents from three corporate executives -- Jubilant Energy senior executive Subash Chandra, Essar deputy general manager Vinay Kumar, Reliance ADAG deputy general manager Rishi Anand -- but none of the documents were secret in nature, the charge sheet said.

A first information report for the leak of classified documents related to various ministries, including those of petroleum and natural gas, on February 17.

Followed by complaint police arrested Lalta Prasad, and Rakesh Kumar -- both brothers and residents of Delhi, Rajkumar Chaubey, a resident of Ghaziabad, government employees Asharam, and Ishwar Singh, and Virender Kumar, employed as a casual worker in the defence ministry.

According to charge sheet Nayak, Vinay Kumar, Saxena, Anand, Chandra, Saikia and Jain hired Rakesh Kumar and Lalta Prasad for obtaining stolen documents from ministry and paid them a handsome amount.

Rakesh Kumar, Lalta Prasad with Chaubey were held red-handed with the photocopies of some secret documents at Shastri Bhawan on the night of February 17.

On the basis of the information provided by them, government employees -- Asharam, 58, and Ishwar Singh, 56 -- were also arrested. They were part of multi-tasking staff (MTS) at Shastri Bhawan.

Police had said that Rakesh Kumar and Prasad were former MTS employees, while Chaubey was their associate who never worked at Shastri Bhawan.

IANS