A Delhi court on Monday dismissed the bail plea of Shantanu Saikia, a journalist, who was arrested along with 12 others for their alleged roles in the Petroleum Ministry documents leak case. Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Sanjay Khanagwal rejected accused Shantanu Saikia's bail application, which was opposed by the Crime Branch of Delhi Police, saying that incriminating documents have been recovered from him.
During the arguments, the investigating officer (IO) said Saikia is running a web portal Indian Petro Group and he used to analyse these documents and sell it to his clients at higher rates. "About 80 sets of documents have been recovered from his house and office. These documents were not in public domain and 23 sets of these documents were secret/confidential in nature," the IO said adding that bail pleas of some of the co-accused have already been dismissed by the court. The IO also said Saikia was also paying Rs50,000 per month to co-accused lalta Prasad in lieu of the documents procured through him.
Saikia, who himself argued on his bail plea as the district courts lawyers are observing strike, said there were no financial transactions as alleged by the police and whatever he was doing was purely in capacity of a journalist.
He said that as per the chargesheet, the Ministry of Petroleum and Gas has said that the documents recovered were not in public domain.
"But they (Ministry) are not saying that these documents are sensitive," he said, adding that he was forced to sign on blank papers by the cops when he was in the police custody. Saikia argued that a journalist is required to do stories on the basis of documents which are not in public domain.