Five held for leaking petroleum ministry documents

New Delhi, February 19: Two petroleum ministry employees and three others have been arrested by the Crime Branch for stealing official documents and leaking them to corporate houses, police said on Thursday. Police said a clerk and a peon in the ministry stole the secret papers, photocopied them and handed them over to three private people in exchange for money.

Delhi Police Commissioner B.S. Bassi said those arrested belong to the multi-tasking staff (MTS) of the petroleum ministry. He said they have been booked under charges of stealing, forgery, trespassing and crimil conspiracy under the Indian Pel Code (IPC).

“Two of the arrested people are MTS employees while the other three are former MTS staff. They were involved in this act for a long time. They provided the photocopies of the secret documents to non-government people for reward,” Bassi said. “The secret papers of the ministry were delivered to some corporate houses to benefit them,” he said. He said the secret documents were stolen from the office of the petroleum ministry situated in Shastri Bhawan — a sprawling building that houses a number of ministries of government of India like petroleum, human resource development, law and justice, and information and broadcasting, among others. (ians)