E-Paper
War room: Send service on accused address
A special CBI court directed the investigating agency to sent a service on the UK address of Ravi Shankaran.
A special CBI court on Tuesday directed the investigating agency to send a service on the United Kingdom address of Ravi Shankaran, prime accused in the Navy War Room leak case, about him being declared a 'proclaimed offender'.
The CBI had filed an application that the UK address of Ravi Shankaran, nephew of Naval Chief Arun Prakash, be exempted from the list of addresses where the 'service' of "why he should not be declared a proclaimed offender" was to be sent as it had been procured by it late.
The court, however, held that the notice must be sent to the UK address of the accused.
Earlier the CBI had sent a 'service' to the Pune, Mumbai and Goa addresses of the accused.
Meanwhile, another accused in the case, businessman Abhishek Verma, whose police custody expired on Tuesday was sent into 14 day judicial custody.
Verma has been accused of offences under Section 120 B (criminal conspiracy) of the IPC and relevant sections of the Official Secrets Act, 1923 by the CBI which claimed Verma passed on sensitive information to Kulbhushan Parashar, the other accused in the case and Ravi Shankaran, at present absconding, and 'foreign office bearers' of Atlas Group of Companies, with whom he allegedly had close links.
The CBI had, on June 23, raided Verma's premises and seized several 'doubtful' documents and a personal computer.
Months after the disclosure of the sensational 'pilferage' of sensitive and classified documents from the Naval War Room, the CBI on April 6 arrested five people, including three former naval officers, in raids at 17 places across six cities—four in Delhi and 13 in Mumbai, Chandigarh, Pune, Goa and Muzaffarpur.
Among those arrested in this connection so far include Lt Cdr (Retd) Kulbhushan Parashar, ex-naval commanders Virender Rana (Delhi) and Jha (Muzaffarpur) who were arrested on April 5 also with two civilians—Bajaj and Jaiswal (both arrested from Pune on April 6.
Nine people were named in the FIR of the Defence Ministry which said 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 endangering the country's security.
Besides the five arrested four others were Lt Cdr (Retd) Ravishankaran, Wing Cdr (Rtd) SK Kohli, Ex Wing Cdr (IAF) Sambhajee L Surve and Ex Captain (Navy) Kashyap Kumar.
