Corporate espionage: Court grants bail to four accused

NEW DELHI: Four accused, arrested for their alleged involvement in the Petroleum Ministry documents leak case, have been granted by a Delhi court.

Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Sanjay Khanagwal granted the relief to accused Lalta Prasad, Rakesh Kumar, Asharam and Rajkumar Chaubey on the ground of parity observing that the co-accused in the case have already been enlarged on bail.

The court granted bail to them on a personal bond of Rs 50,000 each with one surety of the like amount.

Earlier, Shailesh Saxena of Reliance Industries Ltd, Vinay Kumar of Essar, Rishi Anand of Reliance ADAG, Cairns India's K K Nayak, journalist Shantanu Saikia and Virender, were granted bail.

The Crime Branch of Delhi Police has chargesheeted 13 accused in connection with the case for alleged offences under various sections of IPC including 457 (trespass), 380 (theft), 420 (cheating), 468 (forgery for the purpose of cheating), 471 (using as genuine forged documents) read with 120-B (criminal conspiracy).

The other accused in the case are Prayas Jain, Ishwar Singh and Jubilant Energy's Subhash Chandra.

Delhi Police had earlier told the court that offence committed in the case was covered under Official Secrets Act (OSA) and an inquiry on this aspect was underway.

Earlier, the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas had informed the court that eight documents recovered from the accused in the case were classified in nature and none of these were in public domain.

On February 20, police had arrested some of the corporate executives in the case alleging they used to procure classified documents from other Lalta Prasad and Rakesh Kumar and used to pay them.

The documents were then supplied to the firms by these officials for their benefit, the police had alleged.

All the accused have denied allegations levelled against them.