Delhi Police has filed charge sheet against 13 persons arrested in connection with the Petroleum Ministry corporate espionage case. The court has fixed 20 April, 2015 for the consideration of the charge sheet.
According to police sources, the accused have been charge sheeted for alleged offences punishable under sections 457 (trespass), 380 (theft), 420 (cheating), 468 (forgery for the purpose of cheating), 471 (using as genuine forged documents), 120-B (criminal conspiracy) and 34 (common intention) of the Indian Penal Code.
According to police sources, provisions of the stringent Official Secrets Act (OSA) have not been invoked against the accused yet and further investigation is going on.
Among the 13 accused are five corporate executives — Shailesh Saxena from Reliance India Limited (RIL), Vinay Kumar from Essar, K K Naik from Cairns India, Subhash Chandra from Jubilant Energy and Rishi Anand from Reliance ADAG.
Other eight accused are energy consultant Prayas Jain, journalist Shantanu Saikia, Ishwar Singh, Asharam, Rajkumar Chaubey, Lalta Prasad, Rakesh Kumar, Virender Kumar. All the accused are in judicial custody.
The corporate espionage case came into light when the police arrested five accused corporate executives on February 20, 2015 alleging that they used to procure classified documents from accused Lalta Prasad and Rakesh, and used to pay them in return for information. These classified documents were supplied to corporate firms by these officials for their benefit, the police had alleged.
A total of 16 people have been arrested so far in connection with the two separate FIRs lodged by Crime Branch.
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