Navy War room leak case: Kulbhushan Prashar withdraws plea in Delhi High Court

NEW DELHI: A former Navy officer and an accused in the 2006 Naval War Room leak case today withdrew his plea in the Delhi High Court seeking its permission to go abroad for work saying he had to visit in June.

Justice V P Vaish allowed the counsel for Kulbhushan Prashar to take back his application.

"The plea was meant for the proposed visit in the month of June but that time period has already lapsed. Hence, the very purpose of the application stands defeated and this has now become infructuous," the counsel said.

Prashar, who is out of jail after the High Court on May 11, 2012 had granted him the bail, is one of the six accused in the case.

Besides him, the other accused in the case is former naval commanders Vijender Rana, sacked naval commander V K Jha, former IAF Wing Commander S L Surve, businessman Abhishek Verma and Ravi Shankaran.

While granting bail to Prashar and Rana in May 2012, the Delhi High Court had laid conditions and have asked them to surrender their passports, if not already seized by CBI, to the trial court and will not leave Delhi without prior permission.

The 2006 Navy War Room leak case involves leaking of over 7000 pages of defence information of sensitive nature from the Naval war room and air defence headquarters, having a direct bearing on national security.

The various accused in the case have been charge-sheeted by CBI for allegedly conspiring to commit offences under the Officials Secret Act.

CBI had filed the first charge sheet on July 3, 2006 against Shankaran and four ex-defence officials in the case.

In its second charge sheet, the agency had indicted city businessman Abhishek Verma for allegedly conspiring to obtain the defence documents.

Verma was handling Indian affairs of Altas group of industries and had received remittances to the tune of Rs 6.5 crore, ostensibly for paying bribes to defence personnel for obtaining information of various purchases to be made by the military, the charge sheet said.