Delhi HC quashes criminal proceedings against Reliance Industries under Official Secrets Act

The Delhi High Court has quashed the criminal proceedings against Reliance Industries and its officials under the Official Secrets Act, 1923 on the ground that the allegedly “secret” documents in their possession did not pertain to national security and the content was already available in public domain..The Judgement was passed by a Single Judge Bench of Justice Sunil Gaur in a batch of petitions challenging a trial court order framing charges against Reliance Industries, some of its officials and Manager (Corporate Affairs) of Reliance Telecom Pvt. Ltd (petitioners) under the Official Secrets Act, 1923..Criminal proceedings were initiated against the petitioners after photocopies of the four “Secret” documents of Government of India were recovered from the office of one of the petitioners after a search in 1998..The documents recovered from the petitioners pertained to “Core Group on Economic Matters-Challenge of Economic Sanctions against India”, “Minutes of the 37th meeting of the Core Group of Secretaries on Disinvestment” relating to a meeting convened by Cabinet Secretary..Charges were framed against the petitioners under Section 5(2) which is punishable under Section 5(4) read with Section 15 of The Official Secret Act for being in possession of three of the four documents recovered..Assailing the criminal proceedings, the petitioners argued that the documents were not prejudicial to the security of the State and merely marking them to be secret, would not bring the documents in question within the ambit of the Official Secrets Act, 1923..It was pointed out that the word “secret” used in The Official Secrets Act, 1923 had been used only with respect to or in relation to “official code or password”..The petitioners also emphasized the contents of the documents were part of newspaper reports which were on record and it was not the prosecution’s case that the petitioners had leaked the information in respect of the documents to the media..The CBI, on the other hand, argued that the documents were marked “secret” as per the applicable rules and since petitioners were found in possession of these incriminating documents, therefore, they were required to be put on trial..It was submitted that the merits of the case need not be considered prematurely and at this initial stage, only a prima facie case had to be seen..Agreeing with CBI, the Court observed that at this stage, all that was required to be seen was whether a prima facie case was made out or not..Analyzing the order passed by the trial court, the Court further observed that the trial court had decided to not put the petitioners on trial in relation to one document recovered during the search on the ground that this document was in public domain..It also noted the petitioner’s contention with respect to the content of other documents being in newspaper reports was rejected by the trial court for want of proof..In light of the facts of the case, the Court concluded that the trial court had gravely erred in ignoring the newspaper reports on record..“..it is a settled legal position that on technicalities, substantial justice cannot be sacrificed. Neither the rules of procedure nor the technicalities of law can stand in the way of substantial justice. Even the law bends before justice… When substantial justice is pitted against technicalities, then substantial justice has to prevail. It needs no reiteration that procedural process cannot be allowed to defeat substantial justice on mere technicalities”.It thus stated that since the contents of newspaper reports pertaining to the documents were not being denied by the prosecution, the contents of newspaper reports deserved to be looked into to consider the classification of these documents as “secret”..Since the documents had been already made public, they lost their confidentiality, it held..The Court also recorded that even the trial court had not put petitioners on trial in respect of the document which was already in public domain..The Court further iterated that a person could not be put on trial merely because a document had been marked as “secret” and that it was necessary to see the nature of the information contained in it in order to ascertain if any offence under The Official Secrets Act, 1923 was made out..The Court also noted that the concerned Department was also not categoric about documents being prejudicial to the security of the nation..Remarking that the trial court order suffered from utter non-application of mind, the Court thus ordered,.“There is no hesitation whatsoever in concluding that continuance of proceedings before the trial court is a travesty of justice, as the ingredients of the offence alleged are apparently lacking. Thus, to secure the ends of justice, the instant proceedings are hereby halted forthwith. Consequently, impugned order as well as the proceedings emanating therefrom, are hereby quashed.”.Reliance Industries and other petitioners were represented by Senior Advocates Amit Desai, N Hariharan with Advocates Gopal Krishna Shenoy, KR Saviprabhu, Vishnu, Rohit Chandra, Ved Prakash Sharma, Siddharth Singh Yadav, Punya Rekha, Prateek Bhalla, Sharang Dhulia & Govind Venugopal. .CBI was represented by Special Public Prosecutor Prasanta Varma with Advocates Prativa Varma and Chetna..Read the Judgement: