Navy leak case: CBI files charge sheet against 2 commanders

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has filed a fresh charge sheet in the naval leak case against a retired Indian Navy officer as well as three serving ones, people familiar with the matter said

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has filed a fresh charge sheet in the naval leak case against a retired Indian Navy officer as well as three serving ones, people familiar with the matter said.

The CBI has filed a fresh charge sheet in the naval leak case against a retired Indian Navy officer as well as three serving ones, including two commanders.

Those named in the latest charge sheet filed on Saturday, the third in the case so far, include Commanders Jagdish, Abhishek Shaw, and Ajeet Pandey and retired Commodore Randeep Singh. The retired officer was named in the first charge sheet filed by CBI and Pandey in the second, both filed on November 2.

People familiar with the development said the four are accused of leaking confidential information related to advance payments in the INS Sindhuratna-MRLC project. The Major Refit and Life Certification programme envisaged spending up to ₹5,000 crore, HT has learnt.

The espionage racket came to the light on September 2 when the agency raided and arrested Randeep Singh and another retired Commander SJ Singh (who too was named in the first charge sheet). The agency said it recovered ₹2 crore from Randeep Singh. Apart from the two, it also arrested on the same day, Pandey and another serving officer who was not named, and two other people who were also not named. Officials who did not want to be named said all six accused persons were granted bail last week by a Delhi court .

Three executives from Hyderabad based Allen Reinforced Plastics, NB Rao, TP Shastri, and K Chandrasekhar, were also named in the second charge sheet.

It was initially believed that confidential information about the upgrade of the Russian-origin Kilo-class submarines was leaked by the accused. However, the CBI probe found that information related to at least three more projects may have been compromised.

The CBI probe found retired and serving Navy officials conspired to share “secret information of internal files for processing and passing of tender related to procurement and maintenance in different Indian Naval offices with the favoured firms/companies”.

The agency has questioned several persons in the case and further investigation into the leak of information on other projects is going on.

CBI has approached the Centre for its approval for invoking stringent Official Secrets Act (OSA) against the accused as the probe has found that classified information was leaked. OSA provides for imprisonment of up to 14 years, where the offence is committed in relation to any work of defence, arsenal, naval, military or air force establishment or station.