A Delhi court on Tuesday granted bail to former journalist Santanu Saikia, four corporate executives and a contractual worker of the Defence Audit in the Petroleum Ministry’'s documents theft case.
Additional Sessions Judge Raj Kapoor granted bail to Shailesh Saxena of Reliance Industries Limited , Rishi Anand of Anil Dhirubai Ambani Group , Vinay Kumar of Essar, K.K. Nayak of Cairn, Santanu Saikia and the contract worker Virender Kumar on furnishing a personal bond of Rs. 50, 000 with one surety of a like amount by each of them.
The court had on May 1 granted bail to Subhash Chandra of Jubiliant Energy in the case. The court has so far granted bail to seven of the 13 accused chargesheeted by the Crime Branch of the Delhi Police.
While granting bail, the court also said that the accused would not tamper with evidence and influence the witnesses during the bail period.
Counsel for the accused, Ramesh Gupta, sought bail on the parity ground, arguing that once the court had granted bail to Chandra, his clients also deserved bail.
Further, the investigating agency had not invoked the Official Secrets Act against them, Mr. Gupta submitted.
The accused persons were not misusing the alleged stolen documents as they were keeping them with themselves for their own use, Mr. Gupta submitted.
He further said that these documents were in public domain as they were available on Saikia’s website which was subscribed to by several government agencies.
Opposing their bail applications, the prosecution submitted that sensitive documents had been recovered from the accused persons.
The Crime Branch has already filed a chargesheet in the case against all the 13 accused and Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Sanjay Khanagwal has taken cognisance of it and fixed May 18 as the date for hearing arguments on charge.
Those granted bail included former journalist Santanu Saikia and four corporate executives
