Corporate Espionage Case: Senior Executives from RIL, Essar, Cairns, Jubliant Energy, ADAG Reliance Arrested

Five senior executives from top energy firms and two consultants were among seven more people arrested today.
In this file photo, Delhi Police Commissioner BS Bassi. (File)
In this file photo, Delhi Police Commissioner BS Bassi. (File)

NEW DELHI: Five senior executives from top energy firms and two consultants were among seven more people arrested today in the sensational corporate espionage scandal in which classified documents including an input for upcoming Finance Minister's budget speech were allegedly leaked.     

With this, the total number of arrests in the case busted yesterday rose to 12.      

"We have arrested five persons. Shailesh Saxena from RIL, Vinay Kumar from Essar, KK Naik from Cairns, Subhash Chandra from Jubilant Energy and Rishi Anand from ADAG Reliance," said Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime) Ravindra Yadav tonight. The arrests were made in the evening.        

According to Additional Commissioner of Police (Crime) Ashok Chand, all these company executives were receivers of the stolen documents which have been recovered by police teams during raids from their establishments.      

Saxena is Manager, corporate affairs, Reliance Industries Limited(RIL); Chandra is senior executive, Jubilant Energy; Anand is DGM, Reliance ADAG; Vinay is DGM, Essar and Naik is GM, Cairns India.      

They have been booked under IPC sections 120 B (criminal conspiracy) and 411 (dishonestly receiving stolen property).      

The alleged pilfering of 'secret' documents, which was thought to have been a racket confined to the Petroleum ministry, actually covered matters in finance, coal and power ministries, Delhi Police said.            

After yesterday's arrest of five people, including two Oil Ministry staffers and three middlemen, two energy consultants--Santanu Saikia, a former journalist, now running a petro web portal and Prayas Jain--were arrested earlier in the day as they were suspected to be receivers of the stolen documents.            

"We have arrested two people, one of them is Santanu Saikia and the other is Prayas Jain. Both of them are some sort of independent consultants. One of them (Saikia) runs a website where he would run his analysis and people would subscribe to it. These to have been arrested and investigation is on," Police Commissioner B S Bassi said.     

The case FIR, produced in a local court, said an input on the National Gas Grid for the Finance Minister's budget speech of 2015-16 is among the various "secret" documents recovered from the accused.      

Besides, police has also recovered a letter of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Principal Secretary Nripendra Misra, according to the FIR in the case presented to Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Sanjay Khanagwal, who heard the proceedings for remand of the accused.  

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