New Delhi, Feb. 19: Watergate blew up after a break-in at the Washington hotel. What looks like an audacious corporate espionage racket in India began to unravel with a breakout from a ministry.
Reliance Industries, India's largest private company, was tonight striving to clear the air after one of its employees was detained and its office in Connaught Place searched as part of a probe into data theft from the petroleum ministry.
Delhi police's crime branch has arrested five persons, including a clerk and a peon from the Union petroleum ministry, on charges of selling confidential documents, including policy papers, to some private companies ahead of the annual budget.
Other than the employee of Reliance Industries Ltd, owned by Mukesh Ambani, 15 people were being questioned till late tonight. Among the 15 is a journalist who was in the news in 2008 under completely different circumstances.
The police were conducting searches in the first-floor office of Reliance at Gopal Das Building in Connaught Place. The police said nine companies dealing in energy were under the scanner.
"A full-fledged probe is on and provisions of the Official Secrets Act may be slapped on the arrested persons later," Delhi police commissioner B.S. Bassi said.
He said the confidential documents had been leaked to certain independent consultants and companies working in the energy sector.
"A preliminary probe has revealed that corporate espionage at the ministry of petroleum and natural gas at Shastri Bhavan, less than 300 metres from Parliament House, was going on for the past several years. All those who are recipients of stolen property will be questioned and action will be taken," he added.
A preliminary probe has revealed that the confidential information was to be shared with some corporate houses working in the field of energy, sources said.
But the police are yet to connect all the dots, and the nature of the information that was stolen has not been made public yet.
The petroleum ministry is a repository of classified commercial information, including data on oil exploration, pricing and quantity of petroleum imports, gas pricing, approvals sought by state-owned oil firms for global acquisitions and presentations by potential foreign investors. The ministry is the nodal agency for decisions such as the supply of fuel to industrial units and defence forces and crude oil imports.
The oil ministry deals with market-sensitive information about giants like ONGC, BPCL, HPCL, the IOC, Gail India and Oil India.
Reliance Industries and the government are locked in two arbitration cases over a gas block, the KG-D6. One of these deals with allegations of inflated costs and lower production to bring down profits that need to be shared with the government. The other is related to the government deferring gas-pricing guidelines.
The theft
Over the years, some companies seem to have cultivated and put together a network of government officials to steal sensitive data, police sources said. The sources said a joint secretary-level official had alerted the police recently to the theft of files from the petroleum ministry's office. On Tuesday evening, officers of the crime branch waited outside Shastri Bhavan.
An Indigo car carrying three people entered the premises. Two of the passengers went inside while the third remained in the car. The car sported signage that declared it to be the property of the Government of India, but it turned out to be fake.
"After around two hours, when the two persons came out of the building, the trio were arrested," the police chief said.
They were identified as Lalta Prasad, 36, a resident of Khichdipur in Delhi, Rakesh Kumar, 30, a resident of Nauroji Nagar, and Raj Kumar Chaubey, 39, a resident of Vaishali in Ghaziabad.
"Official documents, duplicate keys used by them for accessing the offices, forged identity cards and fraudulently obtained temporary passes were found in their possession," Bassi said.
During their interrogation, the police learnt that Lalta Prasad and Rakesh Kumar were brothers and had earlier been temporarily employed at Shastri Bhavan. In 2012, both had left their jobs.
"The duo told us that they were assisted by their father Asharam, 56, a clerk in the ministry, and Ishwar Singh, 57, a peon. Both Asharam and Ishwar were arrested later," said a police officer.
The arrested persons told the police that they used to enter the offices of bureaucrats and the minister, take documents, photocopy them on the in-house machines and keep them back.
Recently, CCTV cameras were installed at Shastri Bhavan. "However, the CCTV cameras had been disabled when the trio entered the building," an officer said. "They told us that they got good money from some companies for the documents."
Till now, the police have registered cases under sections that deal with theft, trespass, cheating and criminal conspiracy.
"We are analysing the documents and will invoke the relevant sections if these documents fall under the purview of the Official Secrets Act," an official added.
Reliance responds
Reliance Industries tonight said it had launched a "robust internal probe" into the detention of one of its employees.
"It has been brought to our notice that one personnel has been detained by law-enforcement authorities. We are unaware of more details. As per SOP (standard operating procedure), a robust internal probe is under way," a company official said.
"The matter is under investigation as per law and RIL is determined to cooperate in every possible manner. No information residing in the said ministry is of commercial consequence to us - we are in arbitration and our only expectation is an expeditious resolution in line with our legal rights and contentions," the official added.
Petroleum minister Dharmendra Pradhan said strong action would be taken against the employees of his ministry who allegedly leaked the documents to private companies.
"They will be severely dealt with. The police are probing the case and we will take strong action against the guilty. The government will come down hard on them," he said.
