SC allows use of leaked documents in Rafale case, dismisses Centre's objections

In a setback to the Centre, the Supreme Court Wednesday allowed the plea relying on leaked documents for seeking review of its Rafale judgement and dismissed the government's preliminary objections claiming "privilege" over them.

The Centre had submitted that the three privilege documents were unauthorisedly removed from the Defence Ministry and used by the petitioners to support their review petitions against the December 14, 2018 judgement of the apex court which dismissed all pleas challenging the procurement of 36 Rafale fighter jets from France.

A three-judge bench delivered two separate but unanimous verdicts rejecting the objections raised by the Centre that those documents were not admissible as evidence under Section 123 of the Indian Evidence Act, and no one can produce them in court without the permission of the department concerned as those documents are also protected under the Official Secrets Act.

The Centre also failed to impress the bench, comprising Chief justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justices S K Kaul and K M Joseph, that the disclosure of those documents was exempted under the Right to Information Act as per Section 8(1)(a) and those who conspired in photocopying the papers committed theft and put national security in jeopardy.

CJI, who wrote the judgement for himself and Justice Kaul, noted that all the three documents were in "public domain" and published by prominent daily The Hindu were "in consonance with the constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech".

CJI said: "We deem it proper to dismiss the preliminary objections raised by the Union of India questioning the maintainability of the review petitions and we hold and affirm that the review petitions will have to be adjudicated on their own merit by taking into account the relevance of contents of the 3 documents, admissibility of which, in the judicial decision making process, has been sought to be questioned by the respondents in the review petitions."