The News Minute | February 20, 2015 | 10:01 am IST
The Delhi Police on Thursday arrested five people in connection with leaking of official documents from the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas at Shastri Bhawan. Of those arrested, one is reportedly Shailesh Saxena, a Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) employee.
According to a report by The Financial Express, the police also raided several establishments in the national capital including one in Connaught Place which houses offices of a leading private petroleum firm believed to be RIL.
The Delhi Police Crime Branch in a statement said that the stolen documents were being sold to some individual of private energy consultancy companies as well as to those in the Petrochemical/Energy industry.
However, this is not the first time that Reliance has been linked to cases of leaking or possessing classified documents.
In 1998, three top officials of Reliance Industries, including former group president V Balasubramanian, were accused of illegally possessing classified government documents that could benefit the company's businesses. Four secret documents were allegedly found in Balasubramanian's locked office-table drawer on October 28, 1998. The other accused were former group vice-president AN Sethuraman and former corporate affairs general manager Shankar Adawal.
When in 2002, Sethuraman and Adawal, were arrested and a non-bailable warrant was issued against Balasubramanian, Reliance reacted to it by saying "No comments", states a 2002 report by The Economic Times.
Fourteen years later in 2012, a Delhi court framed charges against Reliance Industries, which the court had named the fourth accused, and its three officials in a case registered against them by the CBI under the Official Secrets Act in 1998, states a 2012 report by The Indian Express.
The report adds that 'the investigation record mentions in several instances that two documents were faxed by the accused officials to both Anil Ambani and Mukesh Ambani, who were working together at that time. Anil Ambani received a faxed copy from one of the accused and communicated the relevant portions to four other persons in the company'.
The court also observed that "Prosecution appears to have not made any effort to investigate as to whether this document, on being faxed, actually reached the two managing directors..."
A 2012 report by The Hindu noted the several documents found with the Reliance officials. 'The first document (D-7) was on the subject “Core Group on Economic Matters – Challenge of Economic Sanctions against India”. The second document (D-8) was a copy of a page of the first document but was allegedly marked to some very important people within the RIL hierarchy. The third document (D-9) was on the subject “Minutes of the 37{+t}{+h}meeting of the Core Group of Secretaries on Disinvestment” convened by the Cabinet Secretary on September 21, 1998, regarding disinvestment in PSUs. The fourth document (D-10) was a letter from the Secretary, Petroleum and Natural Gas Ministry, on proposals for “Rationalisation of Customs and Excise Tariff Rates for the Hydrocarbon Sector,” but the court concluded that this was not a “secret” document', it stated.
Read: Full text: What Delhi Police's Crime Branch said about arrests for leaking Petroleum ministry documents