A CBI team departs after raiding a bureaucrat’s home in Delhi. (PTI)

June 23: The CBI today raided 19 places in four cities in the naval war-room leak case, and said it had evidence of a large ring of “compromised” military and defence ministry officials selling sensitive information.

The raids targeted 14 people ? six naval officers, two army officers, three defence officials, a retired naval officer and two others, including a former MP’s son ? in Delhi, Calcutta, Bhubaneswar and Visakhapatnam.

The seizures indicate the leaks weren’t confined to the naval war room and the air defence directorate as thought before, CBI spokesperson G. Mohanty said. Officials in almost every wing of the armed forces and defence ministry have been passing sensitive information on to the accused in exchange for “gratifications”, he added.

None of the 14 raided was arrested. In Calcutta, documents were seized from the quarters of two naval officers in Hastings and Belvedere Road. Commodore A.K. Patnaik is in charge of INS Netaji Subhas while Commander S.S. Dhiman looks after quality assurance (weapons equipment).

Also raided were the Delhi home and office of Abhishek Verma, the businessman son of former Congress Rajya Sabha member Veena Verma. The sleuths seized documents and computer hard disks from both places as well as the office of Abhishek’s chartered accountant Sushil Baghera.

“Investigations point to Verma having very close links with two former navy officers, Kulbhushan Parashar and Ravi Shankaran,” a source said.

It was with Parashar’s arrest on April 5 night and a series of raids and arrests the next day that the scandal had burst into the public arena. Shankaran, a relative of the serving navy chief, is believed to be hiding in London.

The four other naval officers raided today were Commanders S.M. Hanchinal, A.K. Pandey and B.B.S. Jamwal, and National Cadet Corps Commander Dinesh K. Swain in Bhubaneswar.

The two soldiers on the list are Lt Col S.S. Chaudhury and Major Devendra Sharma; and the three defence ministry under-secretaries are Prem Shanker Mehra, R.S. Dudani and H.S. Bhatia.