PetroGate: Delhi court fixes November 18 for hearing case

The court also directed the Delhi police to rectify any deficiency in documents provided to the defence

A Delhi court today fixed November 18 for hearing the Petroleum Ministry documents leak case in which 13 persons including five executives of corporate houses were chargesheeted and directed the police to rectify any deficiency in documents provided to the defence.

Chief Metropolitan Magistrate (CMM) Sanjay Khanagwal posted the matter for November after some of the accused told the court that scrutiny of documents supplied to them along with the charge sheet by the Crime Branch of Delhi Police was not complete.

During the hearing, the defence advocates moved separate pleas seeking some "deficient" documents from the police and the court directed the investigating officer (IO) to supply them to the accused.

A defence counsel told the court that police is telephonically calling the accused for further interrogation and urged the court to direct the IO to issue notice as per the procedure if they want to call any accused for further questioning.

"We have no objection and we are ready to co-operate, provided the prescribed procedures are followed," the counsel said.

Among the 13 chargesheeted accused are five corporate executives -- Shailesh Saxena from RIL, Vinay Kumar from Essar, K K Naik from Cairns India, Subhash Chandra from Jubilant Energy and Rishi Anand from Reliance ADAG.

The other accused are multi-tasking staff in the Petroleum Ministry Ishwar Singh, Asharam, former staff of the ministry Lalta Prasad, Rakesh Kumar, Defence Ministry staffer Virender Kumar, private person Rajkumar Chaubey, energy consultant Prayas Jain and journalist Shantanu Saikia.

All the 13 accused are presently out on bail.