FIR says budget document among leaked papers

New Delhi: The sensational petroleum ministry document leakage case assumed wider dimensions Friday 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 Friday 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 came 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 in December 2010, which mentioned "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 benefitted 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 RIL and Essar groups.

Delhi Police 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 Feb 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.

Police said Lalta Prasad and Rakesh Kumar were on the payroll of Jain and he used to pay them Rs.40,000 each per month.

The first information report (FIR) filed Wednesday accessed by the media Friday details the photocopies of documents recovered from the five people initially arrested in the case.

Some of the documents are latest and have been signed only this week.

Among the photocopied documents is a monthly gas report of December 2014 of the planning and analysis cell of the ministry. It was signed Feb 16.

There is a letter of Nripendra Misra, principal secretary to the prime minister.

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.

The information about leakage of budget inputs has come three days before the commencement of the budget session of parliament.

Police also said Friday that documents relating to the power and coal ministries were also recovered from the people arrested initially.

Bassi said Friday that Lalta Prasad and Rakesh Kumar lifted documents indiscriminately.

"The arrested people (Kumar and Prasad) did not steal particular documents. They instead used to lift any document lying on the table," he said.

The theft of documents was taking place in the office of the ministry located in the high-security Shastri Bhawan near the Parliament House complex.

All the seven arrested so far have been charged under sections of the IPC relating to stealing, forgery, trespass and criminal conspiracy, Bassi said.

Police are also mulling whether the arrested people can be booked under the Official Secrets Act. Crime Branch officials had also taken the five accused to Shastri Bhawan to recreate the scene.

The FIR details how the "secret papers" were photocopied after office hours by the arrested who used duplicate keys to open the offices after entering Shastri Bhawan on forged identity cards and temporary passes obtained fraudulently.

Meanwhile, Reliance Industries said it has launched a “robust internal probe" into detention of one of its employees by Delhi police in connection with alleged official document theft in the oil ministry.

"It has been brought to our notice that one personnel has been detained by law-enforcement authorities. We are unaware of more details. As per SOP (standard operating procedure), a robust internal probe is underway," a company official said

The company is determined to cooperate with the police probe in every possible was, he added.

Congress party leaders Friday targeted Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan over his remarks that hinted at espionage in the ministry allegedly having taken place during the UPA regime and demanded an apology from him.

Party leader Manish Tewari demanded a Supreme Court-monitored investigation into the petroleum ministry document leakage case that had Thursday caused reverberations in the political and corporate circles.