Defence Ministry worker arrested in corporate espionage case

New Delhi: A casual worker employed at the Defence Ministry was arrested on Tuesday for allegedly providing forged identity card to a key accused in Petroleum Ministry leaks case while police maintained that no sensitive documents were leaked or stolen from the Defence Ministry.

With this, 13 people have been arrested in the corporate espionage case related to Petroleum Ministry, while one person was arrested yesterday on charge of leaking confidential documents from Coal and Power ministries. Seven persons were also detained in this connection.

According to the police, Virender Kumar, employed as a casual worker at Ministry of Defence, had allegedly given a forged ID card to Lalta Parsad and also a paper with the official letter head.

"This document was used by Ram Kumar Chaubey to prepare the fake permission of his vehicle and projected it as being hired by Government of India," said a senior police official.

However, he added, "no sensitive document has been stolen from the Defence Ministry". Lalta Parsad and Ram Kumar Chaubey were first to be arrested in the case when the Crime Branch blew the lid on February 19.

Virendra Kumar was arrested today in connection with the first FIR registered by Delhi Police. This module stole documents from the petroleum ministry. Police had yesterday arrested one man Lokesh Sharma and registered a second FIR as this was a different module which operated in power and coal ministry.

Cracking down on a suspected case of corporate espionage, Delhi Police on Thursday arrested two junior Oil Ministry officials and three other middlemen for allegedly leaking classified government documents to energy companies.

On Friday last, two energy consultants Santanu Saikia and Prayas Jain and five senior executives from top energy firms identified as Shailesh Saxena from RIL, Vinay Kumar from Essar, KK Naik from Cairns, Subhash Chandra from Jubilant Energy and Rishi Anand from ADAG Reliance were arrested.