A Delhi court on Tuesday refused to grant bail to five corporate executives and a contractual employee of the Defence Audit of the Defence Ministry in the documents theft case.
The order rejecting their plea was announced by a court employee. He said the plea was dismissed by Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Sanjay Khanagwal and the copy of the order would be made available on Wednesday. The court rejected the bail applications of Shailesh Saxena of Reliance Industries Limited , Rishi Anand of Anil Dhirubai Ambani Group , Vinay Kumar of Essar, K.K. Naik of Cairn, Subhash Chandra of Jubiliant Energy, and Defence Audit contractual employee Virender Kumar.
Seeking bail, counsel for Mr. Saxena, Ramesh Gupta, said that the charge of theft was not attracted against his client as there was no stealing of documents from the Ministry. He said that his client had just obtained photocopies of the documents the original of which were in the possession of the Ministry.
So far as the disclosure of the two accused that they used to supply the photocopies of the documents to the accused for a payment of Rs. 30,000 per month was concerned it was not admissible, Mr. Gupta said.
He further said that at the most his client could be charged under Section 411 (dishonestly receiving stolen property knowing it to be stolen) of the Indian Penal Code which provides for the maximum punishment of three years.
The police in its submission said that the investigation of the case was still going on and there was a likelihood of the accused persons tampering with the evidence as they were getting the seized documents verified by the officers of the Ministry. The police had arrested the five corporate executives on February 20. They used to procure documents from Lalta Prasad and Rakesh, accused in the case, for a consideration, and supply the papers to their senior officers in their respective companies for preparing policies, the police alleged.
They used to procure documents from Lalta Prasad and Rakesh, accused in the case, and supply those to their senior officers in their companies, allege police
