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War-room leak: Accused fails to appear in court
Lt Cdr (retd) Ravishankaran, prime accused in the Navy war-room leak case, failed to appear before the court.
Lt Cdr (retd) Ravishankaran, prime accused in the Navy war-room leak case and nephew of Naval Chief Admiral Arun Prakash, failed to appear before a city court on Monday.
The special CBI court may now initiate proceedings to get the property of Ravishankaran attached.
On April 6, several months after the sensational 'pilfering' of classified documents from the Naval war room, the CBI had arrested five people, including three former naval officers, and raided 17 places across six cities.
Among those arrested include Lt Cdr (Retd) Kulbhushan Parashar, who was picked from the IGI Airport soon after he landed in New Delhi from London on April 5.
While four places were raided in Delhi, 13 other places searched in Mumbai, Chandigarh, Pune, Goa and Muzaffarpur.
The other four arrested were ex-naval commanders Virender Rana (Delhi) and Jha (Muzaffarpur) who were arrested on April 5 along with two civilians, Bajaj and Jaiswal (both arrested from Pune on April 6).
The searches yielded several 'incriminating' documents. Among searches conducted on 17 premises, mostly at the residences of the accused included that of a Mumbai-based chartered accountant and the factory premises in Mumbai and Goa of another accused.
In total, nine people were made accused in the case under the Official Secrets Act. Besides the five arrested, four others were Lt Cdr (Retd) Ravishankaran, Wing Cdr (Retd) SK Kohli, Ex Wing Cdr (IAF) Sambhajee L Surve and Ex Captain (Navy) Kashyap Kumar.
The FIR of the Defence Ministry mentioned that three officers of the Indian Navy and another from the Indian Air Force along with retired officers and others conspired to trade off classified documents and information of the Defence Ministry which endangered the security of the country.
