Petroleum min documents leak: CCTV operator took money to tamper with footage

The petroleum ministry officials accused of leaking sensitive documents were aided by the CCTV camera operator, who switched off the devices to allow the late-night theft of documents, the Delhi Police has said in its chargesheet, a report in Times of India said.

Delhi police recently (19 April) filed chargesheet against 13 persons arrested in connection with the Petroleum Ministry document leak case.

The chargesheet, filed last week, said that the CCTV cameras installed at the ministry in Shastri Bhavan curtailed the free movement of the accused.

“To overcome this hindrance, (ministry staffer) Asharam along with his son had a meeting with the operator, Vir Singh, and lured him for switching off the CCTV camera as and when required during the night,” The Times of India quoted the police as saying.

Singh, who is currently on the run, agreed to their lucrative offer, the police added in their report.

Delhi Police on Saturday filed chargesheet against 13 persons arrested in connection with the Petroleum Ministry document leak case, PTI had reported.

Police sources said that provisions of the stringent Official Secrets Act (OSA) have not been invoked against the accused yet and further investigation is going on.

On April 15, the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas in its report had told the court that eight documents recovered from the accused in the case were classified in nature and none of documents seized from them were in public domain.

According to the latest chargesheet, the police said that the camera operator Vir Singh switched off the CCTVs to facilitate the movement of the accused on the intervening night of 17-18 February.

“The chargesheet has the call detail records analysis to support the claim that the suspects frequented the ministries at night. The cell ID location of Lalta Prasad’s numbers and his brother Rakesh’s numbers is at Shastri Bhawan at odd hours in the night,” the ToI report notes.

Among the 13 accused are five corporate executives — Shailesh Saxena from RIL, Vinay Kumar from Essar, K K Naik from Cairns India, Subhash Chandra from Jubilant Energy and Rishi Anand from Reliance ADAG and the other eight accused are Ishwar Singh, Asharam, Rajkumar Chaubey, Lalta Prasad, Rakesh Kumar, Virender Kumar, energy consultant Prayas Jain and journalist Shantanu Saikia.

All the accused are in judicial custody.

On April 10, the court had sought reports from the Home and the Petroleum ministries about the nature of documents recovered by the investigators during their probe.

With inputs from PTI