Former reporter arrested in petroleum ministry document leakage case

New Delhi: A former journalist along with a corporate employee has been arrested in connection with the petroleum ministry document leakage case, police said today, adding that some more people would be arrested soon.

Santanu Saikia, who runs a web portal and covered crime stories for several years, was arrested early Friday for his alleged role in providing secret documents of the petroleum ministry to corporate houses.

Prayas Jain, an energy consultant, was also arrested Friday.

Delhi Police Thursday had arrested two employees of the petroleum ministry and three others for stealing official 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 the photocopy of some secret documents at Shastri Bhawan Feb 17 night.

On information provided by them, government employees - Asharam, 58, and Ishwar Singh, 56 - were also arrested. They were were part of multi-tasking staff (MTS) at Shastri Bhawan.

Police Thursday said that Kumar and Prasad were former MTS employees, while Chaubey was their associate who never worked at Shastri Bhawan.

The theft of the secret documents had been taking place in the office of the ministry located in high-security Shastri Bhawan near the parliament house.