Tuesday, August 24, 2010
New Delhi Today's Issue (The Pioneer)Staff Reporter | New Delhi
Brigadier (Retd) Ujjal Dasgupta, who was arrested four years ago on the charge of passing on classified information to an American diplomat, was finally granted bail by a city court on Monday. The ailing Dasgupta had been incarcerated all these years with no chargesheet filed against him.
His family members and former colleagues had been struggling for months for his release after Dasgupta’s health deteriorated inside Tihar Jail. The Pioneer, in a series of reports, had highlighted the Brigadier’s plight, following which he was admitted to AIIMS in May 2010 for a complete medical investigation.
Additional Sessions Judge Inder Jeet Singh granted the bail subject to his furnishing a personal bond of `75,000 and a surety of the same amount, with the conditions that he will not leave the country or contact any of the case witnesses.
Dasgupta, now 64, had been seeking bail on health grounds. He had suffered a massive heat attack in November 1988 and undergone a coronary artery bypass graft surgery at AIIMS. Dasgupta is the last of the three accused to get bail in the case. Commodore (Retd) Mukesh Saini, who was working with the National Security Council Secretariat, and Shib Shankar Paul, a senior systems analyst at the Secretariat, have already been granted bail by the Tis Hazari court.
The soldier was put behind bars for four years, though evidence against him could not be gathered. His friends and relatives had been pointing out that denying him medical help amounted to denial of justice. In the wake of investigative agencies’ failure to gather evidence, his former colleagues had begun a campaign seeking justice for Dasgupta. “This is good news and we are very happy. I am sure his glory will be restored since he has always been an intelligent person and an officer,” said one of his former colleagues.
Dasgupta, director of computer cell at the Research and Analysis Wing, was arrested on July 19, 2006, under provisions of the Official Secrets Act and accused of giving sensitive information to Rossanna Minchew, an American diplomat. The prosecution claimed that he had passed on the information through pen drives, which were recovered during investigation. His office laptop, home computer and some hard disks had also been seized by the prosecution.
“The house of the applicant was searched and raided in violation of the statutory provisions of law envisaged in the Official Secrets Act and Sub-Inspector Sajjan Singh was not authorised to conduct the investigation in the case,” Dasgupta’s counsel Pramod Kumar Dubey argued.
“There is collusion between the police/special cell, R&AW and IB officials to implicate the applicant (Dasgupta) falsely,” he added.
Dubey also argued that Dasgupta, a 63 year old heart patient, has clean antecedents and has undergone triple bypass surgery. The documents contained in two envelopes, supplied by the prosecution, do not contain classified information, he said. Dasgupta was detained on the basis of these documents which the prosecution had claimed were classified. The documents were supplied to Dasgupta only after an intervention by the court.
Dasgupta was looking after the development of ‘Anveshak’, a database management system. The court, in its “prima facie” observation, said Central Forensic Sciences Laboratory analysis of seized hard disk showed that computer files related to Anveshak were last accessed in May 2005. Minchew was given visa for India in August, 2005 and therefore could not have received any information on Anveshak from Dasgupta as the file had last been accessed in May 2005. Minchew was in India to coordinate Indo-US Cyber Security Forum. Dasgupta also pointed out that as per the prosecution itself, the Anveshak software is not classified.
Original Story: http://www.dailypioneer.com/278281/Brig-in-jail-for-4-yrs-without-trial-gets-bail.html
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