Espionage case: Executives in police custody till February 24

New Delhi: Reacting to Santanu Saikia’s claims that he was trying to uncover a scam, petroleum minister Dharmendra Pradhan said Mr. Saikia was saying such things to cover up and in his own defence.

“Let him spill all the information he has. The primary accusation is that somebody stole the papers from the ministry. Police is investigating. Anybody has the right to tell everything to the police,” he said.

Union home minister Rajnath Singh said all those guilty in the corporate espionage scandal would not be spared and that they would receive the strictest punishment.

Earlier on Saturday, while producing the five corporate executives before chief metropolitan magistrate Sanjay Khanagwal, the police told the court: “National interest was taken for a ride in the case,” adding,  “Documents related to national security have also been recovered. This may attract charges under the Official Secrets Act.”

The five arrested were Mr Shailesh Saxena of RIL, Mr Vinay Kumar of Essar, Mr K.K. Naik of Cairns, Mr Subhash Chandra of Jubilant Energy and Mr Rishi Anand of Reliance ADAG. They were booked under IPC Sections 120 B (criminal conspiracy) and 411 (dishonestly receiving stolen property). The court remanded the five arrested corporate executives in police custody till February 24 for further questioning.

The police told the court they have to consult the ministries concerned regarding the documents recovered from the possession of the accused and that custodial interrogation was required to confront them with the same.

These five accused were procuring these sensitive documents at the behest of their senior officials, some of whom might be interrogated in the ongoing investigation, police added.

The advocates appearing for these five accused opposed the police’s plea seeking five days police custody, contending that their clients have been illegally detained since February 18 and 19.

While continuing raids at several locations, the police reportedly took Mr Subhash Chandra, who had worked in the Petroleum Ministry earlier, to Mr Prayas Jain’s office in the morning.

After searching Mr Jain’s office, the police team took him to the Noida office of Jubilant Energy.  The police also seized laptop and computers from the office of another petroleum company whose executive was also arrested.

The Delhi top cop added, “We have search-ed places which were necessary to the course of the investigation. We may raid more places as our aim is to reach the bottom of the whole thing,” adding, “Investigation is on and it will end only when a chargesheet will be filed.”

The police had on Friday told the court that an input for the Union finance minister’s Budget speech of 2015-16 is among the various “secret” documents recovered from the accused. Apart from these five corporate executives, the police had arrested seven persons — two oil ministry multi-tasking staff employees, three middlemen and two energy consultants — Mr Santanu Saikia and Mr Prayas Jain — on Friday.