Corporate espionage reaches green ministry doorsteps

PA to a joint secretary of the ministry and a UPSC employee held; total arrests go up to 16

Jitender Nagpal, personal assistant (PA) to a joint secretary in the forest and environment ministry, and Vipan Kumar, PA to a member of the Union Public Service Commission, were arrested for allegedly selling confidential information to Lokesh Sharma, an energy consultant arrested last week.

The police told Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Satish Kumar Arora that they had recovered documents related to ministries of coal, environment and transport from the accused. "They used to supply documents to Lokesh Sharma," the investigators told the court.

"Vipan was earlier posted at the petroleum and natural gas ministry and he was getting secret documents with the help of his contacts mainly from there," Joint Commissioner of Police Ravindra Yadav told reporters. Sharma was working with energy consultant firm Infraline.

After hearing the arguments, the court sent the accused to five-day police custody. It appointed Sunil Parashar as legal counsel of the accused, who were not represented by any lawyer. The investigation into the case had begun on a tip-off from the Intelligence Bureau following leakages of secret and confidential documents from the oil ministry.

The police had arrested Santanu Saikia, a former journalist who runs web portal indianpetro.com, and Prayas Jain, an energy consultant for procuring the same from Sharma.

According to the police, they also used to buy confidential documents from a different syndicate run by Lalta Prasad and his brother, Rakesh Kumar. Following the duo's arrest, the police had arrested Shailesh Saxena from RIL, Vinay Kumar from Essar, KK Naik from Cairns, Subhash Chandra from Jubilant Energy and Rishi Anand from ADAG Reliance.