New Delhi: Former journalist Santanu Saikia, an accused in the petroleum ministry document leakage case, said on Saturday it was a Rs.10,000 crore scam.
“It’s a Rs.10,000 crore scam and it was a cover up,” Saikia told reporters outside the Crime Branch office here, while being taken to court.
Saikia, along with with some corporate officials, have been arrested for allegedly leaking the documents.
Meanwhile, the five senior executives from top energy firms who were arrested in the corporate espionage scandal were produced in a local court on Saturday from where they were remanded in police custody for further interrogation.
The five persons who were arrested by the Crime Branch on Friday night have been identified as Shailesh Saxena from RIL, Vinay Kumar from Essar, KK Naik from Cairns, Subhash Chandra from Jubilant Energy and Rishi Anand from ADAG Reliance.
According to police, 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; 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 and 411.
The whole scandal turned murkier on Friday as it came to fore that classified documents including an input for upcoming Finance Minister’s Budget speech were allegedly leaked.
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. The total number of arrests in the case has risen to 12.
On Thursday, five people, including two Oil Ministry staffers and three middlemen were arrested.
Two energy consultants – Santanu Saikia, a former journalist, now running a petro web portal and Prayas Jain – were arrested on Friday morning while the five company executives were arrested in the evening.
The FIR 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. (Agencies)
