AN OFFICIAL Secrets Act case dating back to the time when the two Ambani brothers had not parted ways has now come back to haunt the Reliance Industries.
A Delhi court on Monday framed charges against the company and its three senior executives for possessing secret cabinet documents. The police had found the secret government documents during a raid on the office of the company’s group president in 1998.
Additional sessions judge Narinder Kumar said there was enough prima facie evidence to prosecute the company and the officials — the then group president V. Balasubramanian, vice- president A. N. Sethuraman, and general manager ( corporate affairs) Shankar Adawal — under sections of the Act referring to wrongful communication of secret information.
“ No explanation appears to have been furnished by any of the accused to the investigating agency as to where this document was obtained from,” the court said.
It said there was no evidence to charge the Ambani brothers, but faulted the police probe for that. It pulled up the police for not investigating the involvement of the then managing directors, Mukesh and Anil Ambani, who had been faxed one of the documents.
“ The prosecution appears to have not made any effort to investigate as to whether this document, on being faxed, actually reached the two managing directors.
There is also no evidence as to what was written, said or done by these two managing directors, in case the document actually reached them, so as to attribute them requisite voluntariness, knowledge and connivance,” the judge observed.
During the raid, cabinet documents on economic matters, disinvestment and tariffs connected to the hydrocarbon sector had been found in Balasubramanian’s office. The documents included minutes of the meeting of the core group of secretaries on disinvestment as well as a letter from the petroleum & natural gas ministry.