Ravi Shankaran has been spotted in Sweden after slipping out of Britain when an arrest warrant was issued against him by a UK court on the CBI's request.
NEW DELHI: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has zeroed in on Ravi Shankaran, the main suspect in the Navy war-room leak case first exposed in DNA.
Shankaran is a relative of former navy chief admiral Arun Prakash. According to the CBI, Shankaran was seen in Sweden a few days ago, exactly four months after he managed to slip out of the UK where he was said be living after fleeing India.
A British court had issued a warrant for his arrest on April 10 after the CBI filed a request on the basis of an Interpol alert.
“We have alerted the Interpol in Sweden and have asked it to detain Shankaran at once,” said a senior official of the investigating agency. The fugitive is suspected to have fled from the UK after India began the process of extraditing him from that country.
Senior officials said that Shankaran is an arms dealer and is suspected to have received sensitive information from the material stolen from the directorate of naval operations. The agency has also named Shankaran in the five charge-sheets filed in the case so far.
Officials said that they were able to ascertain Shankaran’s location on the basis of his Indian passport, which he has been using since 2006 after the ministry of external affairs revoked the documents.
“We have also come to know that Shankaran has been visiting several European countries on the passport,” an official said. “An alert has been sent to all the countries so that he is detained immediately.”
The CBI had raided 14 different places across the country on September 12 last year, and had attached Shankaran’s properties. The agency had also raided Shankaran’s company, Shanks Oceanographic in Goa, and was scrutinising the bank accounts of his other firm, Besix India.
The investigations into the case have almost been completed and the agency has exonerated three people: Raj Rani Jaiswal, who was allegedly used as a honey trap in effecting the leaks; Mukesh Bajaj, a Pune-based businessman; and Kashyap Kumar, a captain in the Navy who was dismissed after the scandal came to light.
The other people who remain accused in the case are former IAF wing commander Sambhaji Rao Surve, Shankaran, ex-naval commanders Vinod Kumar Jha and Vinod Rana, wing commander (retired) S K Kohli, and Khulbushan Parashar.
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