Corporate espionage: Court to consider charge sheet on May 7

A Delhi court on Friday fixed May 7 for considering the charge sheet filed against three arrested accused, including two government officials, in the corporate espionage case for allegedly possessing "sensitive" documents relating to various ministries.

Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Satish Kumar Arora posted the matter for the next date after the proceedings could not take place today due to the ongoing lawyers' strike against the delay in enhancing pecuniary jurisdiction of trial courts.

The Crime branch of Delhi Police had on April 23 filed the charge sheet against Lokesh Sharma, an employee of a Noida- based consultancy firm, Jitender Nagpal, PS to Joint Secretary in Forest and Environment Ministry, and Vipan Kumar, PA to a UPSC member.

The court had, however, said there were several unanswered questions in the probe, including as to how the recovered documents influenced the decision-making of those companies or the government. It had also said that the police needed to establish the link between series of events.

In the charge sheet, police has named 19 persons as witnesses in the case. Earlier, the police had told the court that some laptops, monitors, software and electronic datas were recovered from the accused and some of the data were found deleted from the laptops.