NEW DELHI: The government on Wednesday told the Supreme Court that documents related to the Rafale fighter jet deal have been stolen from the Defence Ministry and threatened The Hindu newspaper with the Official Secrets Act for publishing articles based on them.
Those who put documents on the Rafale deal in the public domain are guilty under the Act as also contempt of court, Attorney General K K Venugopal said before a three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi.
An investigation into the theft is on, the attorney general said on a day the newspaper published another article on the fighter jet deal.
The bench, also including Justices S K Kaul and K M Joseph, was hearing a batch of petitions seeking a review of its December 14 verdict dismissing all the pleas against the deal procured by India from France.
Former Union ministers Yashwant Sinha and Arun Shourie and advocate Prashant Bhushan, who had jointly filed the petition, alleged that the Centre suppressed crucial facts when the apex court decided to dismiss the batch of PILs.
When Bhushan referred to an article written byformer editor N Ram, Venugopal said the write-ups were based on stolen documents. An FIR has not been registered so far into the theft of documents, he said.
The bench sought to know from the Centre as to what it has done when it alleges that the stories are based on stolen material. On behalf of Sinha, Shourie and himself, Bhushan said the top court would not have dismissed the plea for an FIR and the probe, had critical facts not been suppressed.
Venugopal said the documents relied upon by Bhushan were stolen from the Defence Ministry and an investigation into the matter was under way.
The CJI said hearing Bhushan did not mean the top court was taking on record the documents on the Rafale deal. Justice Gogoi also asked Venugopal to tell the court what action had been taken on theft of documents on the aircraft deal. The AG submitted that the documents were marked secret and classified and are therefore in violation of the Official Secrets Act. He also told the Supreme Court that the Rafale case pertains to defence procurement which cannot be reviewed judicially.
The Bench will hear the review petitions further on March 14.
The high voltage hearing saw the bench showering several tricky questions to the AG who was buttressing that the stolen materials cannot be relied to revisit the judgement dismissing the pleas and it was necessary to determine the sources who provided the sensitive documents. The bench asked Venugopal “if an act of corruption is committed in Rafale deal, will govt take shelter behind Official Secrets Act? I (CJI) am not saying it is committed, but if it is then government cannot take shelter behind OSA.” It further said it been has settled in a catena of judgments that even if stolen documents are cited, and if they are found relevant, the court can look into them.
Opposing the plea for CBI inquiry into the Rafale deal, Venugopal said any order to the effect would be damaging to the country as the recent incidents have shown how vulnerable is the scenario in which the country was trying to meet its defence requirements. However, the bench said the issue of national security did not arise in the case as allegations were of grave crime of corruption. The Attorney General went ahead with his submissions and said “certain issues are outside the purview of judicial review. “Do we have to come to the court to justify when we declare war, when we declare peace? Do we have to come and seek permission of the court every time?” he asserted. (PTI)
