A Delhi court Wednesday awarded seven-year rigorous imprisonment to retired captain Salam Singh Rathore in an offshoot of the 2006 Navy War Room leak case, saying he had committed an offence against national security.
Special CBI Judge S K Aggarwal handed down the jail term to Rathore for the offence of spying under the Official Secrets Act. The judge convicted the accused under Section 3(1) C of the 1923 Official Secrets Act, but acquitted another accused, Commander (retired) Jarnail Singh Kalra, in the case.
Rathore, during his posting in the acquisition wing of the Ministry of Defence, had obtained gifts in cash and kind from a defence middleman. The searches at Rathore’s residential premises had also led to the recovery of a large number of incriminating classified defence documents.
Three of the sensitive documents recovered were provided to him by Kalra. He had received these documents from the Ministry of Defence for onward transmission to HAL Corporate Office, Bangalore, instead, he retained them and passed them on to Rathore.
The CBI had filed its chargesheet against both – Singh and Kalra in 2007. “Charges have been framed against the duo for offences under Sections 120-B and 409 of the Indian Penal Code and Section 3 and 5 of the Official Secrets Act, 1923 for obtaining, retaining, collecting and passing on of sensitive classified defence documents having a bearing on national security,” a CBI spokesperson had said then.
