The Centre yesterday told the court that documents related to Rafale that have appeared in the media and cited by petitioners seeking a recall of the December 14 ruling giving a clean chit to the government on the purchase of 36 Rafale fighter jets were privileged documents stolen from the defence ministry.
Referring to the dissent note by the three members of India Negotiating Team (INT) in the eight-page note, attorney general K K Venugopal told the bench of chief justice Ranjan Gogoi, justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and justice K M Joseph that it was being probed if they were stolen by former or present employees.
The attorney general referred to an article in The Hindu by its former editor N Ram related to the note by the three members of the INT and said that it was being investigated.
The attorney general took exception to the newspaper publishing a report on February 8 - just prior to the hearing of the Rafale plea by the top court.
At this, CJI Gogoi wanted to know that if what had been published in two write-ups were based on “unauthorised” documents, what action the government had taken in the first instance when the story appeared on February 8.
The court asked the attorney general to apprise it of the steps taken vis-a-vis the documents allegedly stolen from the defence ministry.
Venugopal told the Supreme Court it may file a criminal case against The Hindu newspaper under India’s Official Secrets Act for publishing “stolen” government documents.
“There is nothing to worry about. What we published is legitimate and we stand by it,” Ram said
The Rafale deal has been the centre of allegations from the main opposition party, Congress, that the Modi government paid too much and that it forced Dassault to accept businessman Anil Ambani’s Reliance Defence as its Indian partner even though the company had no such prior experience in defence contracting.
When asked for comment, a Dassault spokesman referred to comments its CEO Eric Trappier has made in the past on pricing and the choice of a partner. Trappier has previously defended the pricing, said there was no scandal, and stressed that it was not forced to pick Reliance as a partner.
Reliance Defence declined to comment.
Ambani has previously said that the Congress party has been misled and misinformed by corporate rivals and vested interests.
Those found guilty of violating the colonial-era Official Secrets Act, which remained on the books after India’s independence from Britain in 1947, can face imprisonment of up to 14 years. The law has been used to jail journalists in the past, and is opposed by rights groups as they say it violates free speech.
Meanwhile Congress president Rahul Gandhi yesterday called for filing charges against Modi, saying there was enough evidence to prosecute him in the ‘Rafale scam’. “The trail of corruption begins & ends with him,” tweeted Rahul. “There is now enough evidence to prosecute the PM in the Rafale Scam,” he said.