MY KOLKATA EDUGRAPH
ADVERTISEMENT
Regular-article-logo Saturday, 03 May 2025

RELIANCE OFFICIALS SENT TO JAIL 

Read more below

FROM OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT Published 29.04.02, 12:00 AM
New Delhi, April 29 :    New Delhi, April 29:  Two senior officials of Reliance Industries, India's largest private sector company, were sent to prison today following a 1998 charge that secret government files were found from the corporate giant's office in Delhi. The court blow came on a day Reliance bid for a 26 per cent government stake in Indian Petrochemicals Ltd. Today was the last day for bidding. The CBI had filed charges of criminal conspiracy against three top executives of Reliance for 'receiving, collecting, possessing and handling of secret classified documents of the various ministries and departments of the government in the interest of Reliance Industries Limited'. The charges tantamount to subversion of the Officials Secret Act, 1923. Rejecting bail pleas, chief metropolitan magistrate Sangita Dhingra remanded Reliance group vice-president A.N. Sethuraman and corporate affairs general manager Shankar Adawal in judicial custody till May 13. The third accused, then group president V. Balasubramanian, was not in the court on medical grounds. The Reliance counsel has been asked to submit medical documents to prove Balasubramanian underwent treatment for brain tumour. As soon as the order was delivered, the two officials were taken to the court lock-up and later shifted to Tihar Jail. The CBI has attached with the chargesheet documents it claimed to have found during raids on the offices of Reliance. The first document, marked secret, runs into 15 pages and has points discussed at a high-level meeting on September 14, 1998, by the 'core group on economic matters - challenges of economic sanctions against India'. The two-page second document has a note, purportedly in Shankar's handwriting, saying: 'Document dealing with various ministries plus issues. Point No. 3 on Page 2 deals with us.' The eight-page third document contains minutes of the 37th meeting of the Core Group of Secretaries on Disinvestment, convened by the Cabinet secretary on September 21, 1998. A letter from then petroleum secretary T.S. Vijayaraghavan to revenue secretary Javed Chowdhury, discussing the government's proposals for rationalisation of customs and excise tariff rates for the hydrocarbon sector, is also among the papers produced by the CBI.    
Follow us on:
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT