NEW DELHI: Widening its probe into the corporate espionage case, Delhi Police on Thursday nabbed two employees of the Ministry of Environment and Forests and the UPSC taking the total number of arrests in the case so far to 16.
Joint Commissioner (crime) Ravindra Yadav said the racket involving document theft from the Oil, Power, Defence and Coal Ministries was suspected to have spread to the MoEF and the UPSC.
The two accused arrested on Thursday were identified as Jitender Nagpal, PS to Joint Secretary in Forest and Environment Ministry and Vipin Kumar, PA to a UPSC member. They were arrested on charges of selling data to some corporate and consultancy firms. A probe revealed that Vipin was earlier posted at the Oil Ministry and had been procuring the stolen data with the help of some employees in the ministry.
“Nagpal and Kumar used to provide stolen documents to some corporate firms and Lokesh Sharma, who ran a consultancy firm in Noida,” Yadav said. Lokesh was arrested a couple of days ago.
“The two accused arrested on Thursday disclosed that they had been indulging in the illegal activities for several years. Both shared a common e-mail ID and used it to forward documents to their clients after scanning them,” Yadav said.
They were produced before a local court and were remanded in police custody for five days.