NEW DELHI: Santanu Saikia, a former business journalist arrested in the corporate espionage case, on Saturday tried to claim that he was only investigating the spy scam in the Petroleum Ministry as a journalist and he had no role in leaking the so-called secret documents nor any such documents were recovered from him.
He even went to the extent of putting a price on the espionage, claiming that it was a Rs 10,000 crore scam in his chance interaction with reporters while being taken into Delhi Police Crime Branch office for interrogations. He claimed all documents seized from his office were collected by him as part of his professional duty as a journalist as none of them were “secret” or “classified” as claimed by police while taking him on remand with others.
“I was doing a cover up. It is a Rs 10,000 crore scam. I was just investigating the case,” he asserted even as police whisked him into the Crime Branch office.
Saikia’s assertion came soon after Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh tried to claim credit for busting the racket, saying “We should be commended as we found out that this was happening since if we would have not been vigilant, this (racket) should not have been busted.”
In a related development, a chief metropolitan magistrate, on Saturday, remanded five corporate executives arrested in the case on Friday to the police custody till Tuesday. The court had on Friday sent four others, including Saikia, to police custody till Tuesday for further interrogations.
The Crime Branch told the court that documents recovered from the five corporate executives are related to “national security aspect” and as such charges may be framed against them under the Official Secrets Act (OSA) that entails jail up to 14 years. It sought their remand for custodial interrogation.
“National interest was taken for a ride in the case. Documents related to national security have also been recovered. This may attract charges under the Offical Secrets Act,” a police prosecutor told the court.
The five accused who were produced in the court are Shailesh Saxena, manager ( corporate affairs), Reliance Industries Limited; Vinay Kumar, DGM, Essar; K.K. Naik, GM, Cairn India; Subhash Chandra, senior executive, Jubilant Energy; and Rishi Anand, DGM, Reliance ADAG.
Police sources said some more persons from the corporate world and two other journalists, who were also conduits for the corporate entities to fret out the sensitive information, may be booked as they are already under interrogations. In a related development, the Noida office of Jubilant Energy, a petrochemical company, was searched on Saturday after first taking its arrested executive Subhash Chandra to the office of arrested energy consultant Prayas Jain.
PTI adds: More raids are possible, Delhi Police Commissioner B S Bassi said as he promised to reach the bottom of the whole thing.
“We have searched places which were necessary for the course of investigation. We may further raid places as our aim is to reach the bottom of the whole thing,” Bassi said.
“We need to know since how long this has been going on and who all benefited from it,” said a senior official.
Meanwhile Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said nobody will be allowed to breach
the official system and all those responsible will be brought to book.
“Nobody is above law. Nobody will be spared. Law will take its own course,” he said on a day when the Delhi Police produced in court five executives of companies like Reliance
Industries, Essar, Cairn and Reliance Group who allegedly bought stolen official documents of the Oil Ministry.
Refusing to identify the specific incident that led to the ministry calling in IB and the Delhi Police to probe alleged stealing of documents from the ministry, he said, “We had discomfort (over a certain incident). We had launched an internal surveillance and even installed CCTV cameras about a month back.”
“The competent system and authorities were informed about official documents going out,” he said without elaborating.
He did not say when the ministry sought help of IB or the police to investigate leakage of documents.
“Nobody will be spared… nobody can breach law, howsoever powerful he may be… We will not allow anyone to breach the system,” he said.
On claims of a Rs 10,000-crore scam made by former journalist Shantanu Saikia, who is allegedly took documents from the ministry staff for selling to corporates, Pradhan said, “He is free to say whatever… it is all under investigation.”
Gas grid papers leaked out too
NEW DELHI: The Finance Ministry tried to put a lid on the corporate espionage racket busted on Wednesday because of the police approaching it with a top secret document on creation of a national gas grid seized from the gang because it was part of Arun Jaitley’s budget speech to be delivered on February 28.
Sources said the Finance Ministry had sought point-wise calculations of the government’s revenue loss on account of the fiscal incentives from the Petroleum Ministry for making the gas grid a reality. The documents seized include the Finance Ministry’s letter as well as the Petroleum Ministry’s response that was to go into Jaitley’s budget speech.
Since the proposal is now leaked, it may be dropped by Jaitley in his speech, burying once again the grand plan of piped gas through a network of pipelines across the country once again.
The gas grid plan was first envisaged in a vision document by then Petroleum Minister S Jaipal Reddy in the UPA-II government in 2012, envisaging a gas grid of 30,000 km by 2017, with a capacity to carry 875 million standard cubic metres per day. The plan was, however, shelved as the cash-starved Finance Ministry refused to dole out the fiscal incentives to induce investors to put their money in laying the pipelines.
