Headlines
Petroleum ministry leak: Executives sent to police custody, two offices raided
New Delhi, Feb 21
Five corporate officials,
arrested in the sensational petroleum ministry document leakage case,
were Saturday sent to three days police custody by a court here even as
police raided two places in the city as part of its investigations and
Home Minister Rajnath Singh said that no one guilty will be spared.
Those
sent to police custody till Feb 24 are RIL corporate affairs manager
Shailesh Saxena, Jubilant Energy senior executive Subash Chandra,
Reliance ADAG DGM Rishi Anand, Essar DGM Vinay and Cairns India GM K.K.
Naik.
All were arrested Friday and booked under sections dealing
with criminal conspiracy and use of stolen property. Their arrest took
to 12 the number of those behind bars in the case.
The court had
Friday sent three of the seven other accused to judicial custody for 14
days. The remaining four had been sent to police custody of three days.
The
espionage case in the heart of the national capital assumed a wider
dimension Friday after police complaint said the papers stolen included
inputs for the forthcoming union budget and a letter relating to the
prime minister's office.
The documents also related to the power and coal ministries, police said.
Former journalist Santanu Saikia, who is among the arrested, said Saturday it was a Rs.10,000 crore scam.
"It's
a Rs.10,000 crore scam and it was a cover up," Saikia told reporters
outside the Crime Branch office here, while being taken to court.
Delhi
Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal lauded police for cracking the case and
advised it to trace those who had benefited from leaked
information."Compliments Delhi police for bursting espionage racket.
During interrogations, police should try to reach top people, who would
benefit from leaked information," he tweeted Saturday.
Police had
Thursday announced arrest of five people, including two petroleum
ministry employees, for stealing documents from the ministry office
located in the high-security Shastri Bhawan near the Parliament House
complex, and leaking them to corporate houses.
Saikia and Prayas
Jain, a Melbourne-based energy consultant, were arrested Friday. Later
in the day, the five executives were arrested.
Police Saturday raided the Patel Nagar office of Jain and Chandra's office in Noida.
Police officials said that Chandra's office and some other rooms were searched to recover stolen documents.
They
also said that Saxena had in his possession some documents relating to
"national importance and security" and these had been passed by him to
his seniors.
All documents seized are "sensitive", an official said.
Rajnath Singh told reporters that strong action will be taken and no guilty person would be spared.
"We
should be commended as we found out that this was happening, the
culprits will be punished," he told reporters."If we would have not been
vigilant, this (scandal) would not have been busted," he added.
Rakesh
Kumar, 30, Lalta Prasad, 36 - both brothers and residents of Delhi, and
Raj Kumar Chaubey, 39, a resident of Uttar Pradesh's Ghaziabad, were
held red-handed with photocopies of some secret documents in Shastri
Bhawan Feb 17.
Based on information provided by them, government
employees Asharam, 58, and Ishwar Singh, 56 were also arrested. They
were part of the multi-tasking staff (MTS) in Shastri Bhawan.
The
FIR details how the "secret papers" were photocopied after office hours
by Kumar and Prasad, who used duplicate keys to open offices after
entering Shastri Bhawan with forged identity cards and temporary passes
obtained fraudulently.
The photocopies were passed on to Saikia and Jain.
While Ishwar Singh, Asharam and Chaubey are in judicial custody, all others have been sent to police custody.