According to a report published in The Hindu, Union government on Wednesday told the Supreme Court that the documents related to Rafale fighter aircraft deal have been stolen from the Ministry of Defence (MoD).
A three-judge Bench, comprising Chief Justice of India (CJI) Ranjan Gogoi and Justices S.K. Kaul and K.M. Joseph, began the open court hearing of the Rafale case.
Yashwant Sinha and Arun Shourie and advocate Prashant Bhushan, who had jointly filed the petition, alleged that the Central government suppressed crucial facts when the apex court decided to dismiss the batch of PIL (public interest litigation) petitions against the Rafale deal in December.
When Mr. Bhushan referred to an article published in The Hindu, Attorney General (AG) K.K. Venugopal opposed it, saying that the articles were based on stolen documents and an investigation into the matter was on.
While Mr. Venugopal was seeking dismissal of the review petitions and raising objections to Bhushan’s arguments based on the articles published in The Hindu, the Bench sought to know from the Centre what had it done when it was alleging that the stories were based on stolen material.
The AG submitted that the documents relied on by the petitioners were marked secret and classified, and therefore, are in violation of the Official Secrets Act, reported The Hindu.
