A city court on Monday took cognisance of the chargesheet filed by Delhi Police against 13 accused arrested in connection with the Petroleum Ministry documents leak case. During the hearing, Crime Branch of Delhi Police told the court that they have chargesheeted 13 accused in the case and their further investigation is going on after which a supplementary chargesheet would be filed.
A total of 16 people have been arrested so far in connection with two separate FIRs lodged by Crime Branch. The investigating officer (IO) told the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate (CMM) Sanjay Khanagwal that data from laptops recovered during investigations and emails exchanged between the accused are being examined and they would file a supplementary chargesheet.
Detailing the role of the accused, police said that their names have cropped up in the disclosure statements of the accused and the sensitive documents have been recovered from their possession.
Regarding the five corporate executives, who are among the 13 accused chargesheeted in the case, police said huge amount of documents have been recovered from them and the call detail records (CDRs) of all the accused showed that they were in touch with each other.
Police also said that bank account details of the accused are being examined and various transactions through cash and cheques have been seen in the accounts of accused lalta Prasad and Rakesh Kumar.
The court, after hearing the submission, took cognisance of the chargesheet and fixed the matter for further proceedings on May 18. During the hearing, the counsel appearing for accused Shantanu Saikia, a journalist, moved a bail plea on behalf of his client and the court fixed it for hearing on April 25.
The court, after taking cognisance, directed the IO to supply the copies of the chargesheet and other documents attached with it to the accused.
All the accused have been chargesheeted for the alleged offences under sections 457 (trespass), 380 (theft), 411 (dishonestly receiving stolen property), 418 (cheating a person whose interest the offender was bound to protect), 420 (cheating), 468 (forgery for the purpose of cheating), 471 (using as genuine forged documents), 474 (possessing forged documents with intent to use it as genuine), 34 (common intention), read with 120-B (criminal conspiracy) of IPC.
Among the 13 chargesheeted accused are five corporate executives — Shailesh Saxena from RIl, Vinay Kumar from Essar, KK Naik from Cairn India, Subhash Chandra from Jubilant Energy and Rishi Anand from Reliance ADAG.