Corporate espionage: Court sends three accused to judicial custody

NEW DELHI: Three accused, who were arrested in the corporate espionage case, were today remanded to judicial custody till March 17, by a court here after the Delhi Police said their custodial interrogation is not required.

The three accused --Lokesh Sharma, Jitender Nagpal and Vipan Kumar-- were produced before the court as their police custody expired today.

"Accused are sent to the judicial custody. Let them be produced on March 17," Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Satish Kumar Arora said.

The court sent Lokesh Sharma, an employee of a Noida-based consultancy firm, Jitender Nagpal, PS to Joint Secretary in Forest and Environment Ministry and Vipan Kumar, PA to a UPSC member to Tihar Central Jail after the crime branch officials did not seek their custodial interrogation.

The counsel for the accused also submitted before the court that they be sent to judicial custody.

During the brief hearing, the police told the court that during the custodial interrogation of the three accused, names of seven more persons cropped up but nothing concrete could be found against them and the probe is still on.

"We have interrogated six to seven more suspects but nothing concrete was found against them and hence we did not arrest them," the police said.

On being asked by court if there was any more information related to some ministries' personnel, the probe agency said nothing more has been found.

The counsel for Lokesh claimed that prosecution's documents in this case were not in proper manner and sought action against the concerned officials.

However, the court asked him to file a proper application on the issue and it would look into the matter.

The Delhi Police had arrested Lokesh on February 23, claiming that "sensitive" documents pertaining to ministries of Coal, Power and others were recovered from his possession.

A separate FIR was registered by the Crime Branch under sections of trespass, theft, criminal conspiracy and fraud in this case separately from the one involved in the petroleum ministry racket.

Jitender and Vipan were arrested on February 25 in the same FIR.

Earlier, the Delhi Police had arrested Virender Kumar, a defence ministry staffer, for allegedly stealing an identity card of an auditor at Indian Defence Accounts Service and providing it to one of the accused, Lalta Prasad, in the case.

On February 19, two junior Oil Ministry officials and three other middlemen were arrested for allegedly leaking classified government documents to energy companies.

In the first FIR lodged in the case,two energy consultants Santanu Saikia and Prayas Jain and five senior executives from top energy firms--Shailesh Saxena from RIL, Vinay Kumar from Essar, KK Naik from Cairns, Subhash Chandra from Jubilant Energy and Rishi Anand from ADAG Reliance--were arrested.

A total of 16 people have been arrested so far in connection with the two FIRs by the Crime Branch of Delhi police.