IANS/New Delhi
The sensational petroleum ministry document leak case assumed wider dimensions yesterday with the arrest of a former journalist and an energy consultant and revelations in the police complaint that the papers stolen included inputs for the forthcoming union budget and a letter relating to the PMO.
The stolen documents were also related to the power and coal ministries, police said.
Delhi Police earlier yesterday arrested Santanu Saikia, who runs a web portal for his alleged role in providing secret documents of the petroleum ministry to corporate houses. The most high profile person among the seven people held in the leak case, Saikia is a former journalist who covered, among other areas, crime and petroleum ministry. Later, he became an energy consultant.
In a post on his Facebook page, Saikia had brought to the attention of his friends and visitors about how the Official Secrets Act was being “misused” by the government. He also quotes The Week’s story on CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation) in December 2010, which mentions “my 10-year court battle to escape prosecution from the CBI”.
Prayas Jain, a Melbourne-based energy consultant, was also arrested.
Delhi Police chief B S Bassi said Saikia and Jain ran an independent website where they uploaded the analysis of the documents which were photocopies of the originals. “And this information was further used by corporate houses. They also shared this information with some individuals in return for money,” Bassi told reporters.
He, however, refused to reveal the names of the organisations which benefited from it.
“It will not be good to reveal the names of these organisations as the investigation is still on.” Police officers, however, said they were questioning officials of Reliance Industries and Essar groups.
Delhi Police on Thursday arrested five people - two petroleum ministry employees and three others - for stealing documents and leaking them to corporate houses. Rakesh Kumar, 30, Lalta Prasad, 36 - both brothers and residents of Delhi, and Raj Kumar Chaubey, 39, a resident of Ghaziabad in Uttar Pradesh, were held red-handed with photocopies of some secret documents in Shastri Bhawan on February 17.
Based on information provided by them, government employees Asharam, 58, and Ishwar Singh, 56 were also arrested. They were part of the multi-tasking staff (MTS) in Shastri Bhawan.
The photocopied documents also included “inputs material on natural gas grid for inclusion in Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s budget speech for 2015-16”, police said. The budget is regarded as a top secret document till it is unveiled by the finance minister in parliament.
