Leakgate: Weak case lets accused off OSA hook

On April 10, the court had sought reports from the Home and the Petroleum ministries about the nature of documents recovered by the investigators during their probe. Then, on April 15 the Petroleum ministry in its report had told the court that eight documents recovered from the accused in the case were classified in nature.

However, despite that the Delhi Police failed to make any breakthrough, which will allow them to push OSA against the accused. Defending, the issue, Delhi Police sources said, though the provisions of the OSA have not been invoked against the accused yet but it could be imposed later depending on further investigation, which is still on.

The chargesheet was filed before Metropolitan Magistrate Akash Jain and the matter was fixed for next hearing before Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Sanjay Khanagwal (who was on leave on Saturday) on April 20.

All of them were charged with alleged offences punishable under Sections 457 (trespass), 380 (theft), 420 (cheating), 468 (forgery for the purpose of cheating), 471 (using as genuine forged documents), 120-B (criminal conspiracy) and 34 (common intention) of IPC.

Among the 13 accused are five corporate executives, Shailesh Saxena from Reliance Industries Limited (RIL), Vinay Kumar from Essar, Subhash Chandra from Jubilant Energy and Rishi Anand from Reliance ADAG.

Other eight accused are Ishwar Singh, Asharam, Rajkumar Chaubey, Lalta Prasad, Rakesh Kumar, Virender Kumar, energy consultant Prayas Jain and Journalists Shantanu Saikia. Presently, all the accused are in judicial custody.

Meanwhile, CBI who is also probing leaks from other ministries found that the tentacles of “Corporate Espionage” is deep routed and claimed that involvement of big guns could not be ruled out.

The startling revelation came with the arrest of Mumbai-based Chartered Account Khem Chand Gandhi. He disclosed that many influential people posted at top private firms including PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) are actively involved in “Corporate Espionage”. Based on his allegation, CBI sleuths also questioned PwC employees but could not find anything against them.