The investigations into the corporate espionage case reached the doorsteps of the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF) on Wednesday when the Delhi Police Crime Branch questioned a personal assistant of Joint Secretary, posted with the Ministry. The MoEF staffer was grilled following the interrogation of lokesh Sharma, an employee of Infraline Energy, who was arrested for leaking sensitive documents to other consultancies.
So far, the Petroleum, Coal, Power and Defence Ministries have been brought under the ambit of Crime Branch investigations. According to police, lokesh also admitted to have procured some documents from the office of the Environment Ministry, located at CGO complex.
Sources told The Pioneer that the personal assistant was picked by the Delhi Police on Wednesday night and lokesh identified him as the one who used to provide classified documents to him.
Sharma was arrested from Delhi’s Dwarka area. Police said two forged identity cards of the Coal and Power Ministries and “official” documents were recovered from him. Police sources said during questioning, Sharma said that his company publishes a magazine, Infraline Plus, which is widely circulated in the Ministries and he would procure documents for its content.
Following his arrest, a second FIR was lodged under IPC Sections for trespass, forgery and criminal conspiracy. Police sources said Sharma’s “module” operated independently of the one in which 13 people were arrested last week, including Reliance Industries corporate affairs manager Shailesh Saxena, Jubilant Energy senior executive Subash Chandra, Reliance ADAG DGM Rishi Anand, Essar DGM Vinay and Cairns India GM KK Naik.
During investigations, role of several other companies —which were the beneficiary of stolen documents — had surfaced. Crime Branch teams also conducted raids on the offices of various companies located in Delhi and NCR (national capital region) on Wednesday and recovered various confidential documents. The sleuths are looking for more persons with whom lokesh was in touch and was providing documents to them.
So far, he has confessed to having supplied documents to one of his woman colleague, who channelised the information to the officials of various corporate houses.
Police said that they have identified the woman and she has been asked to join the probe. Police also conducted a raid on the premises of a company situated at Janakpuri area of West Delhi. Officials refused to divulge the names of the company but did say that they have recovered certain sensitive documents from there.
According to a senior police official, seven multi-tasking staff members of power, coal and other Ministries, who were allegedly providing photocopies of classified documents to lokesh were still on their radar. On Wednesday they were again questioned but later allowed to go. Sources told The Pioneer that they were establishing the role of everyone involved in the espionage case before taking them into their custody.