War room leak case: CBI not in loop

All that has been made available to the CBI are the internal investigation reports, reports Sutirtho Patranobis.

The CBI may have got cracking in the 'navy war room leak' case with five arrests and countrywide raids on Wednesday, but it may actually end up clutching thin air.

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For one, the CBI does not know what exactly it is looking for. It knows "classified" defence documents were leaked, but has no idea of its contents. Sources said: "How is the agency going to investigate a case when it doesn't know what it's investigating. The CBI has seized documents from the 17 premises raided on Wednesday. How do we gauge the importance of the documents."

All that has been made available to the CBI are the internal investigation reports that the navy and the IAF conducted on their officers -- who were later dismissed.

Sources said the reports too do not mention the data leaked. "The argument is that if it's made available to the CBI, it would have to be produced in court. And so it would not remain classified. Does that mean that CBI would have to simply re-hash the navy's and IAF's reports?" sources said.