Documents leak: Police raid two offices of accused

New Delhi, Feb 21 (IANS) The Delhi Police Crime Branch Saturday raided the offices of two of the people arrested in the petroleum ministry document leak case in Delhi and Noida.

Police raided the office of Prayas Jain, an energy consultant who was arrested Friday, in west Delhi's Patel Nagar.

The office of Subhash Chandra, senior executive with Jubilant Energy who was arrested along with four other officials of corporate entities, was also raided in Noida.

Chandra was Saturday morning taken to Jain's office by a police team, which later took him to his Noida office, said a police official.

Chandra's office and some other rooms were searched to recover stolen documents, the official said.

Chandra was sent to three days police custody by a court along with RIL corporate affairs manager Shailesh Saxena, Reliance ADAG DGM Rishi Anand, Essar DGM Vinay and Cairns India GM K.K. Naik.

Police said RIL's Saxena has in his possession some documents pertaining to "national importance and security".

Police seized documents from Saxena which were passed on to his seniors, said the investigating officer.

All the seized documents are "sensitive", the official added.

Rakesh Kumar and Lalta Prasad - both brothers and residents of Delhi and formerly working as multi-tasking staff in Shastri Bhavan - used to enter the Bhavan twice a week. They used to be in regular touch with Jain and Santanu Saikia, a former journalist who runs a web portal.

Kumar and Prasad used to get photocopies done of important documents and pass them on to Saikia and Jain.

On Thursday, police arrested five people, including two petroleum ministry employees, for stealing documents and leaking them to corporate houses.

With seven arrests Friday, the total number of arrests in the case have gone up to 12.

The police complaint said the stolen documents included inputs for the forthcoming union budget and a letter concerning the Prime Minister's Office.

The documents were also related to the power and coal ministries, police said.

The theft of documents was taking place in the office of the ministry located in the high-security Shastri Bhavan near the Parliament House complex.

The first information report (FIR) details show the "secret papers" were photocopied after office hours by the arrested, who used duplicate keys to open the offices after entering Shastri Bhavan with the help of forged identity cards and temporary passes obtained fraudulently.