Making his first public comment since the sensitive documents related to India's Scorpene submarine project were leaked, Navy chief Admiral Sunil lanba said here on Monday, the force has viewed the issue "very seriously." He also said the French shipbuilder DCNS, was asked to launch an investigation into the leak and claimed the leak was not a "cause of worry."
Meanwhile, DCNS, which is collaborating with Mazagaon Docks limited(MDl) in constructing six Scorpene submarines in Mumbai, approached a court in Australia on Monday to stop 'The Australian newspaper' from publishing further details of the documents and remove them from its website.
The 22,400 documents giving details of the combat capabilities of the Indian Scorpene submarines were suspected to have been leaked by a former employee of DCNS as part of corporate war and the French authorities were probing the matter. India had urged them late last week to investigate the issue urgently and share the findings with Indian authorities.
"Any leak of information is viewed very seriously. We have viewed the leak of Scorpene data very seriously and we have asked (French firm) DCNS to launch an urgent investigation into this," the Navy chief said.
He noted the Defence Ministry has set up a high-level committee to investigate the matter and "based on the report of the committee, we will see what mitigation measures need to be taken." This observation came in the backdrop of Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar stating last week that the Navy was approaching the matter as the worst case scenario.
Officials said in this scenario they believed 90 per cent of the leaked documents were contractual or commercial in nature while the remaining ten per cent pertained to operational aspects. The committee was analyzing these papers and if need the Navy was capable of mitigating these issues, they had said.
Asked how serious a concern the leak was, the Navy chief said, "this is not a matter of much worry. The committee is analysing and they will see what data has been compromised and what mitigation steps have to be taken." The committee is expected to submit a detailed report to the Defence Minister by September 20.
The French shipbuilder said in a statement released from Paris said it has approached an Australian court demanding that 'The Australian' newspaper should remove the published Scorpene data from its website and prevent any further publication.
"DCNS, through the application filed, has demanded The Australian to remove the documents which it has published on its website and prevent further publishing of other documents," the statement said.
The company's lawyer on Sunday told the newspaper that the publication of this "highly valuable document" causes a direct harm to DCNS and its customer in terms of spread of sensitive and restricted information, image and reputation. The newspaper, which had said it will publish the documents regarding the weapons system of the submarine on Monday, has not done so.
The French public prosecutor has opened a preliminary investigation into the data leak, with DCNS filing a complaint of breach of trust. Since the MDl is manufacturing the Scorpene submarines under licence from DCNS, the intellectual property rights are with the French firm.
The Indian Navy has maintained that the leak is "not alarming" since it does not impact operational capabilities of the submarine. Giving some examples, they said the weapon systems including missiles and torpedoes were procured from at least 20 different contractors not related to DCNS.
However, 'The Australian' claimed it had the details of the weapon systems and would publish them on Monday.