Petroleum ministry documents leak: Delhi court fixes November 18 for hearing case

NEW DELHI: A Delhi court today fixed November 18 for hearing the Petroleum Ministry documents leak case in which 13 persons including five executives of corporate houses were chargesheeted and directed the police to rectify any deficiency in documents provided to the defence.

Chief Metropolitan Magistrate (CMM) Sanjay Khanagwal posted the matter for November after some of the accused told the court that scrutiny of documents supplied to them along with the charge sheet by the Crime Branch of Delhi Police was not complete.

During the hearing, the defence advocates moved separate pleas seeking some "deficient" documents from the police and the court directed the investigating officer (IO) to supply them to the accused.

A defence counsel told the court that police is telephonically calling the accused for further interrogation and urged the court to direct the IO to issue notice as per the procedure if they want to call any accused for further questioning.

"We have no objection and we are ready to co-operate, provided the prescribed procedures are followed," the counsel said.

Among the 13 chargesheeted accused are five corporate executives.

The other accused are multi-tasking staff in the Petroleum Ministry Ishwar Singh, Asharam, former staff of the ministry Lalta Prasad, Rakesh Kumar, Defence Ministry staffer Virender Kumar, private person Rajkumar Chaubey, energy consultant Prayas Jain and journalist Shantanu Saikia.

All the 13 accused are presently out on bail.

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.

The Crime Branch has chargesheeted the 13 accused in 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).

On February 20, police had arrested the five corporate executives alleging that they used to procure classified documents from accused 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.

Besides them, the police had also arrested Jain, Saikia, Singh, Asharam and Chaubey for allegedly conspiring to procure sensitive documents from different ministries including Petroleum and Natural Gas.

A total of 16 people have been arrested in connection with two separate FIRs lodged by the police.