 "Another arrest in document leaks case")
A junior staffer of the Union defence ministry was arrested on Tuesday, taking the total number of arrests to 14 in the 'corporate espionage' case.
Virender Singh, 31, was working in the housekeeping staff in the ministry since 2010. The police said he'd provided a forged identity card to Lalta Prasad, prime accused in the entire scam of stealing 'classified and secret' documents from offices of the petroleum, coal and power ministries at Shastri Bhawan and Rafi Marg.
The accused, say police, would sell these documents to companies for an amount between Rs 70,000 to Rs 100,000 a month.
The police told Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Sanjay Khanagwal it had not recovered any document from Singh and wanted to interrogate him to ascertain his role in the case. The court remanded him to a day's police custody.
In the same case, Khanagwal sent five corporate executives to jail till March 5. These are Shailesh Saxena from Reliance Industries, Vinay Kumar from Essar, K K Naik from Cairn India, Subhash Chandra from Jubilant Energy and Rishi Anand from Reliance ADAG.
The police informed the court it had not made any new recovery from these executives, arrested last week on charges of buying information from Prasad and his brother, Rakesh Kumar. The brothers were allegedly supplying the same information to Santanu Saikia, who runs a web portal, and energy consultant Pryas Jain.
Sources in the crime branch said it was sending notices to senior management officials of these companies to join the investigation. "Their presence is required to ascertain the extent of gain made by these companies through these stolen documents," said a source. The police say they've recovered documents of the past two years and were questioning junior staffers of various ministries.
Cabinet Secretary Ajit Seth took stock of security arrangements at various ministries and asked the officials to be more vigilant.
"The current system of entry and appointments remains the same but vigilance would be strengthened," said an official with the government's Press Information Bureau.
The official said Seth took stock of the prevailing system of entry/exits and appointments and felt it was generally satisfactory. "The mandate now is to make the security checks and monitoring stricter," the official added.
Virender Singh, 31, was working in the housekeeping staff in the ministry since 2010. The police said he'd provided a forged identity card to Lalta Prasad, prime accused in the entire scam of stealing 'classified and secret' documents from offices of the petroleum, coal and power ministries at Shastri Bhawan and Rafi Marg.
The accused, say police, would sell these documents to companies for an amount between Rs 70,000 to Rs 100,000 a month.
More From This Section
"Singh had provided Prasad blank letterheads for preparing forged letters. These letters were used to show that Prasad's vehicle had been hired to perform duties of the office of the Director of Audit of Defence Services," said Joint Commissioner of Police Ravindra Yadav.
The police told Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Sanjay Khanagwal it had not recovered any document from Singh and wanted to interrogate him to ascertain his role in the case. The court remanded him to a day's police custody.
In the same case, Khanagwal sent five corporate executives to jail till March 5. These are Shailesh Saxena from Reliance Industries, Vinay Kumar from Essar, K K Naik from Cairn India, Subhash Chandra from Jubilant Energy and Rishi Anand from Reliance ADAG.
The police informed the court it had not made any new recovery from these executives, arrested last week on charges of buying information from Prasad and his brother, Rakesh Kumar. The brothers were allegedly supplying the same information to Santanu Saikia, who runs a web portal, and energy consultant Pryas Jain.
Sources in the crime branch said it was sending notices to senior management officials of these companies to join the investigation. "Their presence is required to ascertain the extent of gain made by these companies through these stolen documents," said a source. The police say they've recovered documents of the past two years and were questioning junior staffers of various ministries.
Cabinet Secretary Ajit Seth took stock of security arrangements at various ministries and asked the officials to be more vigilant.
"The current system of entry and appointments remains the same but vigilance would be strengthened," said an official with the government's Press Information Bureau.
The official said Seth took stock of the prevailing system of entry/exits and appointments and felt it was generally satisfactory. "The mandate now is to make the security checks and monitoring stricter," the official added.