The Ministry of Defence has filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court in Rafale case. The MoD in its affidavit says the documents attached by the petitioners in the Rafale review case are sensitive to national security which relates to war capacity of combat aircraft. The MoD said that those who’ve conspired in this leakage are guilty of penal offences including theft by unauthorized photocopying&leakage of sensitive official documents affecting National Security.These matters are now subject of an internal enquiry which commenced on Feb 28.
The Supreme Court is hearing a bunch of review petitions against its verdict in the case, which dismissed the plea for a Central Bureau of Investigation inquiry. The court will continue the hearing on Thursday at 3 P.M.
The batch of petitions seek review of its December 14 verdict which had dismissed demands for a court monitored investigation into irregularities in negotiating the Rafale fighter jet deal with the French government and Dassault Aviation. As the three-judge bench of CJI Ranjan Gogoi and Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and KM Joseph, which had delivered the December 14 judgment, began hearing the review petitions, on Wednesday (March 6), counsel for former Union finance minister Yashwant Sinha, the most high profile petitioner in the case, urged the court to rap the Centre for perjury.
Stating that the December 14 verdict did not go into their prayer for a court-monitored investigation into the Rafale deal but looked at prayers made by other petitioners – advocates ML Sharma and Vineet Dhanda – for cancellation of the deal, the counsel for Sinha argued that the real question before the court is whether their complaint warranted a probe.
Placing reliance on a set of documents related to the Rafale deal and the negotiations between the Indian and French sides that preceded it but which came in the public domain after the December 14 verdict, Sinha’s counsel said the apex court had relied upon “a large number of serious errors of fact” while dismissing the prayer for a probe into the deal.
“Those facts were presumably supplied to the court by the Centre in sealed cover notes…Critical material facts were suppressed from the court… the government should be hauled up for perjury,” Sinha’s counsel said.
–India Legal Bureau