Delhi Court grants bail to retd. Naval officers in submarine information leak case; says CBI's chargesheets incomplete

A Special Court in Delhi has recently granted bail to retired naval officers and another, accused of leaking some internal information regarding tender related documents on consideration of illegal gratification.

While rejecting CBIs arguments, the Special judge, Anuradha Shukla Bhardwaj observed that,

“Even if it is considered for the sake of arguments that CBI had forwarded the application for formal complaint and the ball was in the court of concerned Ministry ­ though the arguments of Ld. Prosecutor is that the investigation is also going on – the part of CBI was not over in as much as it was expected to file a report alongside the said complaint with all the evidence collected by it.”

The Court further observed that, “limitation of submission of charge-sheet within 60 days of arrest would apply for completion of investigation in respect of all offences involved in the case including offences under Official Secrets Act, and not those for Prevention of Corruption act.”

The two retd. officers S. J. Singh, Randeep Singh alongwith T. P. Shastry (ED of Allen Reinforced Plastics Limited, a Hyderabad-based company) were arrested on September 2, for having leaked sensitive information relating to the Navy, and providing that information to private players participating in public procurement.

The applicant/accused were charged under the Prevention of Corruption Act and Official Secrets Act. Under the law the charge-sheet has to be filed for the above charges within 60 days, in default of which accused was entitled to bail.

It was argued by the counsels who appeared for applicant that, in the case concerned, “the chargesheet was filed by the CBI within 60 days but only for the offences under the Prevention of Corruption Act but not the Official Secrets Act, and hence the chargesheet was therefore, incomplete.”

The two charge-sheets filed by the Investigation Agency both dated 02.11.2021 had no mention of provisions of Official Secrets Act despite the fact that as per reply received by Investigation Agency by Indian Navy, the documents in question were secret documents and the Investigating Agency was aware that offence/s under Official Secrets Act were made out against the accused.

After considering the submission of the parties, the court held that the chargesheet filed within 60 days to be incomplete and therefore, granted bail to the accused persons, even though the offences are punishable with up-to 14 years imprisonment.

The court also observed that, "though offences are alleged to be grave, Section 167(2) CrPC does not permit the Court to consider gravity/ seriousness of the offence and statutory bail is to be granted as a matter of right if complete chargesheet not filed within time by the CBI."

Cause Title – CBI v SJ Singh etc

[Advocate(s) Bharat Chugh, Yashpreet Singh & Ekjot Bhasin, appeared for accused Randeep Singh]