Journalist, CEO arrested in Petroleum Ministry documents leak case

New Delhi: The Delhi Police has arrested a journalist and a company’s CEO in connection with leaking of classified documents from the Petroleum Ministry.

Santanu Saikia, who runs an energy portal, and Metis Business Solutions Pvt Ltd CEO Prayas Jain were detained late last night and questioned till the wee hours today in connection with the incident. They were later arrested.

More people are likely to be arrested in connection with the case today.

In a case that caused reverberations in political circles, the Delhi Police on Thursday said that it had arrested two employees of the Petroleum Ministry and three others for stealing official documents and leaking them to corporate houses.

Delhi Police Commissioner BS Bassi said 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. The documents were passed on to some corporate houses in return for rewards, he added.

Bassi said that the two employees arrested by the Crime Branch were part of multi-tasking staff (MTS), while two were former staffers and one a driver who has not worked at the ministry.

According to reports, one of the arrested is an employee of the Reliance Industries. Launching a “robust internal probe” into the detention of its employee, the RIL said no information of commercial consequence to it resides in the ministry with which it is in arbitration in several cases.

Bassi said three of the accused were arrested on Tuesday night but this was kept under wraps so that the two government employees could be arrested.

Rakesh Kumar, 30, Lalta Prasad, 36, both brothers and resident 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 on February 17.On information provided by them, Asharam, 58, and Ishwar Singh, 56, were arrested.

Pradhan, who talked to various news channels, said that the surveillance at the ministry had been tightened by the National Democratic Alliance government and indicated such thefts had been taking place during the previous UPA government’s tenure.

Bharatiya Janata Party spokesperson Sambit Patra said the government will get to the bottom of the matter.

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Source:Zeenews