NEW DELHI – Indian Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court on Saturday(July 7) delivered its sentence in an offshoot of the 2005 Navy War Roomleak case.
The court convicted the accused Captain (retired) Salam Singh Rathore underSection 3(1) C of the Official Secrets Act of 1923. The court acquitted theother accused Commander (retired) Jarnail Singh Kalra of wrongdoing in thecase. The quantum of the sentence is to be pronounced on July 11.
The 2005 Navy War Room leak case involves leaking of over 7,000 pages ofdefence information of sensitive nature from the naval war room and airdefence headquarters, where serving officers allegedly passed on militarysecrets to unauthorised persons for financial gain.
The case came to light in early 2005 when the Air Force Intelligence put anAir Force Directorate Officer, allegedly having an extra-marital affair,under surveillance. The details of the investigation led to revelationsthat had a serious bearing on national security.
The IAF, then, recovered a pen drive containing classified navypresentations relating to procurements from the residence of Wing CommanderSL Surve. The pen drive contained information about India’s naval andmaritime plans for the next 20 years. The navy was informed, who thentraced the leak to the Maritime Operations Centre of the Directorate ofNaval Operations in Delhi.
Three war room officers were implicated in the leak — Commander VijendraRana of the Marine Commando Force, and navigation and operationsspecialists Commander Vinod Kumar Jha and Captain Kashyap Kumar. All threeofficers were sacked without a trial.
In July 2005, the Navy searched the home of Rana and took away his computercontaining classified files. It was found that the sensitive informationhad found its way into the hands of arms dealers and middlemen, includingretired naval officers Ravi Shankaran and Kulbhushan Prashar, and armsdealer Abhishek Verma.
In 2006, the CBI stepped in and filed a chargesheet naming Shankaran,Prashar and Verma. Prashar was arrested in 2006, as he arrived in Delhifrom London. Along with him, the CBI also arrested Jha, Rana, Verma andSurve.
Upon questioning Prashar revealed that he had met Shankaran in London,which led to the CBI cancelling the latter’s passport and issuing a redcorner notice against him. Giving the agencies a long chase, Shankaranfinally gave himself up in April 2010. However, till date, Shankaran hasnot been extradited from the UK.
Two former naval officers Rathore and Kalra were named by in a secondchargesheet filed by the agency in February 2007. Kalra was Deputy GeneralManager (Customer Services) in the Bangalore-based Hindustan AeronauticsLtd (HAL) and allegedly passed on confidential documents to his course mateCaptain Rathore who was in naval procurements in 2005 and who, allegedlypassed those documents on to Lt Prashar.
Both Rathore and Kalra were accused of leaking military secrets under theOfficial Secrets Act and under the Indian Penal Code in charges framed bythe CBI in 2014.
The hearing in the main war room leak case, meanwhile, continues. The caseis currently at the stage of hearing of evidence. Late last year, the CBIclosed the case against former navy captain Kashyap Kumar as nothing wasfound against him. Kumar had been dismissed from service in October 2005without a court-martial.