Three accused, who were arrested in the corporate espionage case, were on Tuesday remanded in judicial custody till March 17 by a court here after Delhi Police said their custodial interrogation is not required.
The three accused — lokesh Sharma, Jitender Nagpal and Vipan Kumar — were produced before the court as their police custody expired on Tuesday. “Accused are sent to judicial custody. let them be produced on March 17,” Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Satish Kumar Arora said.
The court sent lokesh Sharma, an employee
of a Noida-based energy consultancy firm Infraline, Jitender Nagpal, PS to Joint Secretary in Ministry of Environment, Forests & Climate Change and Vipan Kumar, PA to a UPSC member, to Tihar Central Jail after Crime Branch officials did not seek their custodial interrogation.
The counsel for the accused also submitted before the court that they be sent to judicial custody. During a brief hearing, police told the court that during the custodial interrogation of the three accused, names of seven more persons cropped up but nothing concrete could be found against them and the probe is still on.
“We have interrogated six to seven more suspects but nothing concrete was found against them and hence, we did not arrest them,” police said. On being asked by court if there was any more information related to some Ministries’ personnel, the probe agency said nothing more
has been found.
The counsel for lokesh claimed that prosecution’s documents in this case were not in proper manner and sought action against the officials concerned. However, the court asked him to
file a proper application on the issue saying it would look
into the matter.
Delhi Police had arrested lokesh on February 23, claiming that “sensitive” documents pertaining to Ministries of Coal, Power
and others were recovered from his possession.
A separate FIR was registered by Crime Branch under sections of trespass, theft, criminal conspiracy and fraud in this case separately from the one involved in the Petroleum Ministry racket.
Jitender and Vipan were arrested on February 25 in the same FIR.
Earlier, Delhi Police had arrested Virender Kumar, a Defence Ministry staffer, for allegedly stealing an ID card of an auditor at Indian Defence Accounts Service (IDAS) and providing it to one of the accused, lalta Prasad, in the case.
On February 19, two junior Oil Ministry officials and three other middlemen were arrested for allegedly leaking classified Government documents to energy companies.
In the first FIR lodged in the case, two energy consultants, Santanu Saikia and Prayas Jain, and five senior executives from top energy firms — Shailesh Saxena from RIl, Vinay Kumar from Essar, KK Naik from Cairn India, Subhash Chandra from Jubilant Energy and Rishi Anand from ADAG Reliance — were arrested.
A total of 16 people have been arrested so far in connection with the two FIRs by Crime Branch of Delhi Police.