Apex court to Centre on Rafale case: Are the ‘stolen’ documents untouchable?

The Centre, which accused former Union Ministers Yashwant Sinha and Arun Shourie and lawyer Prashant Bhushan of relying on stolen documents to seek a review of the judgment dismissing petitions on the Rafale deal, faced searching queries from the Supreme Court. “Are these documents untouchable” for consideration by the courts, it was asked.

“We can understand you saying petitioners came with unclean hands. That they got the documents through doubtful sources. But it is another thing to say the court cannot consider these documents at all. That they are untouchable,” said a Bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi.

The remarks came when Attorney General KK Venugopal insisted that the review petitions and a perjury application filed in the matter have to be dismissed as the petitioners were averse to disclosing the sources of the documents which were stolen from the Defence Ministry. The high voltage hearing witnessed the Bench asking the Centre: “When there is allegation of corruption, can the government take shelter under national security? If an act of corruption is committed in Rafale deal, will the government take shelter behindthe Official Secrets Act?” It further said it is settled in a catena of judgments that even if stolen documents are cited, and if they are found relevant, the court can look into them.

The Bofors example

During the hearing, the Bench also mentioned the Bofors scam and said: “There were allegations of corruption in Bofors. Now, will you say the same thing — that a criminal court shouldn’t look into any such document in that case? Here we have an open system.”

The Attorney General replied: “Yes, we have an extremely open system here. This is the only country where a court is examining a defence deal as if it is an administrative issue. No other court in any other country will do it.”

The Bench said if the documents were stolen, the government should put its own house in order. “It is one thing to say that we should look at these documents with suspicion. But to say we can’t even look at those documents may not be a correct submission in law,” it observed.

The issue of stolen documents was raised by Venugopal when Bhushan submitted an eight-page note to the bench. The Attorney General said the contents of the documents were based on stolen materials and an investigation is under way.

Venugopal drew the attention of the Bench to a news item published in The Hindu and contended that such publication amounted to an offence under the OSA.