Man who 'stole' Scorpene papers was fired while working in India

NEW DELHI/PARIS: 'The Australian' newspaper uploaded on Thursday a fresh tranche of leaked documents relating to information about the operating instructions of the underwater warfare system of the six Scorpene submarines being built by French firm DCNS for the Indian Navy.

A top defence analyst allayed fears that it could compromise the security of the combat vessels. Like in the previous case, the newspaper blacked out the details which it felt would compromise India's security interests. However, the new set of documents, with the Indian Navy insignia on it and marked “Restricted Scorpene India“, gave details of the sonar system, which is used to gather intelligence underwater. They revealed a wide range of technical specifications of the sonars and at what degree and frequency they would function.

The documents detailed the "Operating Instruction Manual", which talked of how to select a target for weapon firing and weapon configuration selection, among others. Though the Navy has not yet officially reacted to the release of the new documents, sources maintained that they did not compromise national security. They said the same information was on “many naval defence websites“.

The paper said it has been told that the secret data was removed from DCNS -35% owned by Thales and 65% by the French government -by a former sub-contractor in 2011 and taken to a private company in Southeast Asia before being passed on to a branch of that company in a second Southeast Asian na tion. A disk containing the data was then posted in regular mail to a company in Australia. At this stage it is not thought that the leak came from India.

The sub-contractor was fired while providing training in India, the source said.

India's defence ministry said that it saw no immediate security risk and the French government said the information in the documents only showed how the submarines operate and did not compromise their security .

“The Indians can object to the fact that these documents show the Pakistanis how to maintain their submarines and that's annoying, but it doesn't tell the Pakistanis how to detect an Indian ship, or how we build a submarine in France. Not at all,“ the source said.