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1st LD Wrirtethru: Indian court sends 5 corporate officials to police custody for allegedly stealing gov't documents

Xinhua, February 21, 2015 Adjust font size:

A court in the Indian capital on Saturday sent five corporate executives to police custody for three days over the sensational leaking of confidential documents from the Petroleum Ministry and other government offices.

Police showed evidence of the documents recovered from the five persons are documents related to "national security aspect" and would charge them under the Official Secrets Act, said police.

The Crime Branch of Delhi Police produced the five accused before Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Sanjay Khanagwal and sought their custodial interrogation, said Press Trust of India.

The five accused produced in the court included an executive from the Reliance Industries Limited owned by the Ambani clan, one of the richest in the world.

With the arrest of these five accused, the total number of arrests in the case has risen to 12. Seven others were produced in the court Friday out of whom four were sent to police custody till Monday and three were remanded to judicial custody for two weeks.

Police also raided on Saturday a number of corporate offices in Delhi and the satellite city Noida, after interrogating the suspects.

The documents, including those from the oil and coal ministries and a part of a government budget plan for 2015-16 fiscal to be published next week, were allegedly stolen by some government employees and their collaborators from a tight security government complex in central Delhi.

A former journalist and an oil consultant were also among the arrested. The case has shocked the country and the government has vowed to leave no stone unturned to find out the culprits. The suspects were caught after being followed for weeks by security service personnel, said local media. Endi