Input on FM's budget speech recovered, 4 faces custodial probe

Four persons who were arrested in the case of leakage of "secret" documents, including inputs on National Gas Grid for the Finance Minister's upcoming budget speech, were today remanded to police custody till February 23 by a Delhi court.
The Crime Branch of Delhi Police told the court that these four persons, along with other three arrested persons, were passing certain "sensitive documents" to some corporate houses to benefit them.
The police said that documents of ministries of Coal, Power and others were recovered from the possession of the accused and custodial interrogation of four persons --Lalta Prasad, Rakesh Kumar, Prayas Jain and Shantanu Saikia --was required to ascertain the truth.

"Various sensitive documents of Ministries of Coal, Power and other ministries have been recovered. The companies which were benefited by them (accused) have to be investigated," the police told Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Sanjay Khanagwal while seeking custodial interrogation of four accused.
The police also said that these accused were required to be confronted with the documents to ascertain the identity of their associates who were part of the entire conspiracy.
Regarding the other three accused -- Ishwar Singh, Asharam and Rajkumar Chaubey, who were today remanded to jail under judicial custody for two weeks, the police said they were not required for custodial interrogation.

During the hearing, the court asked the police about the names of companies which were allegedly involved in the case.

Responding to this, the police maintained confidentiality about the firms by saying that the names of companies were there in disclosure statements of the accused which have been annexed in the file placed before the court.
In its FIR, the police said that from the possession of accused Rakesh Kumar, photocopies of sensitive documents including input on FM's budget speech have been recovered.
"Photocopy of documents with heading input material on National Gas Grid for inclusion in Finance Minister's budget speech 2015-16," it has said in its FIR filed in the case.