Did Delhi Police ignore OSA in NSCS syping case?

The investigations in the case began in June 2006, when a system analyst of the secretariat S S Paul was arrested on the allegations of passing sensitive information to an American diplomat Rosanna Minchew who was posted here.

It was followed by arrests of RAW official Brigadier Ujjal Dasgupta and a former Navy Official Commander Mukesh Saini, who was then working with Microsoft.
The arrested trio were booked under the Official Secrets Act (OSA), which makes it mandatory that only an official of the rank of Inspector or above can demand information from suspects.

The law also lays down that the name of the person should be properly notified by the Commissioner or Inspector General of the Police (IGP).

However, the investigations in the case were done by the then sub-inpsector Sajjan Singh of Special Cell.

Singh neither held the rank nor the authority to carry probe in such a sensitive matter, alleges Saini who served nearly four years in Tihar Jail as an undertrial. During the course of trial, Saini filed more than 150 RTI applications to prepare his defence. He fought his own case and got bail on May 18, 2010.

The RTI replies received by Saini show the then Delhi Police Commissioner K K Paul, exercising his powers under the provisions of the Act, had "empowered" Inspector Rajinder Singh of the Special Cell to demand any information relating any offence or suspected offences under the law.

The authorisation was withdrawn on September 22, 2006, almost three months after the arrests in the case were made. But contrary to the authorisation entrusted to Inspector Rajinder Singh, investigation, searches and arrests in the case were made by sub-inspector Sajjan Singh.

The searches were made on Saini's house in Delhi Cantonment area on June 11, 2006, the day when Paul was taken into custody. Saini was in United States and returned to India after getting news about the developments.

He was arrested on the intervening night of June 30 and July 1. Just before his arrest, Sajjan Singh went to NSCS office and met Director Vinod Kumar Mall for nearly two and half hours, the RTI reply from NSCS said.

On the same day, Singh sought NSCS opinion whether two documents recovered from the seized hard disc drives from Saini --minutes of Indo-US cyber security forum held in 2003 and a project developed by Saini Secure Information Database Environment -- were confidential and its possession was unauthorised.

He sent two letters in this regard on the same day, of which there are "no entries" in NSCS records, the Secretariat said in its RTI reply. The replies of the said letters were given by Mall in "undated" letters, saying the possession of these documents was unauthorised, which were mentioned only in the diary of Mall, it said.

The NSCS also said there were no records to show how Mall formed his opinion on the two documents. The Council headed by the National Security Adviser is an umbrella body coordinating with different intelligence agencies.