Corporate espionage: Court takes cognisance of charge sheet

A Delhi court today took cognisance on the charge sheet filed against three arrested accused, including two government officials, in the corporate espionage case for allegedly possessing "sensitive" documents relating to various ministries.
Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Satish Kumar Arora after taking cognisance posted the case for scrutiny of documents on May 21.
During the day, the court also supplied copies of the charge sheet, filed by Crime Branch of Delhi Police on April 23, to accused Lokesh Sharma, an employee of a Noida-based consultancy firm, Jitender Nagpal, PS to Joint Secretary in Forest and Environment Ministry, and Vipan Kumar, PA to a UPSC member.

The charge sheet was filed under various sections of the IPC, including 420 (cheating), 380 (theft in building), 411 (dishonestly receiving stolen property), 465 (forgery), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating), 471 (using forged documents as genuine), and 120B (criminal conspiracy).
In the charge sheet, police has named 19 persons as witnesses in the case.
Earlier, the police had told the court that some laptops, monitors, software and electronic data were recovered from the accused. Some data, however, were found deleted from the laptops, the court was told.
It had claimed that Lokesh was getting around Rs 14,000 per month in his bank account from Noida-based consultancy firm Infraline Energy, one of the beneficiary companies, which suggest that he was an employee of the company.

The police had arrested Lokesh on February 23, claiming that "sensitive" documents pertaining to ministries of Coal, Power and others were recovered from his possession.