New Delhi : The espionage ring unearthed on Wednesday was not confined to the petroleum ministry and the same gang had allegedly infiltrated ministries of coal, power and defence as well. The Delhi Police made this submission in a city court on Friday while it was seeking custody of four of the culprits for custodial interrogation.
The documents of the coal ministry, which is housed in the same building as the petroleum ministry, and the power ministry, were recovered during the search on the Defence Colony premises of journalist-turned energy consultant Shantanu Saikia. Also recovered from his office were some documents of the petroleum ministry.
The police dubbed the seized documents as “secret” and “classified” but Saikia’s lawyer objected to that; it is understood that the sensitivity of these documents will now be ascertained from the officials of the concerned ministries. Saikia and another energy consultant, Prayas Jain, who were conduits of the stolen documents before transferring them to the corporate houses, were arrested on Friday, raising the total number of arrests in the case to seven.
An executive of Reliance Industries Limited was grilled for receiving some of these documents, but he was only detained and not arrested.
Both the consultants as well as the two brothers — Lalta Prasad and Rakesh Kumar – who were caught red-handed on Wednesday night with documents stolen from the Petroleum Ministry, were taken on police remand for further custodial interrogation; meanwhile, the two low-rung employees of the ministry and the driver of the car used for carting the documents were allowed to be sent to the judicial lock-up for two weeks.
The police told the court that they had seized a large number of photocopies of “secret” documents including the input for Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s budget speech in Parliament this month end.
Sources said the culprits had made duplicate keys of many offices and hence the government on Friday ordered a change of locks in all rooms latest by Monday when the offices open after a 2-day break.
A top police officer overseeing the investigations and interrogations said more arrests are likely as “we are investigating names within the corporate houses who facilitated the espionage and who might have gained from it.”
The Delhi Police Commissioner, however, refused to reveal names of the organisations that may have benefited from the leaked documents. “It will not be proper to reveal the names of these organisations as the investigation is still on.”
Saikia’s lawyer challenged his arrest and told the court that his client is a journalist and the documents were collected by him as part of his professional duties. He also questioned the police claim that the documents recovered from his office were “secret” and “classified” and urged the court to let the police establish how they were classified. Saikia, a former Times of India journalist, runs a web portal on the oil industry.
Incidentally, the Press Information Bureau is also housed in Shastri Bhawan, which houses the Petroleum Ministry while the power ministry is located next to the INS (Indian Newspaper Society) building that houses offices of over 50 newspapers.
The FIR registered by the police states that the accused had duplicate keys to rooms of senior officers, where they would photocopy “secret” documents for sale to corporates and consultancy firms. The accused clerk’s job was to switch off the close-circuit cameras. Rooms that were allegedly accessed in the Petroleum Ministry were those of Special Secretary Rajive Kumar, Joint Secretary (Refineries) Sandeep Poundrik, Joint Secretary (Exploration) U P Singh and Director (Exploration-1) Nalin Kumar Srivastava, among others, the sources said.
