Court extends JC of Abhishek Verma, wife in OS Act case

A Delhi court on Friday extended till October 12 the judicial custody of arms dealer Abhishek Verma and his Romanian wife Anca Maria Neacsu in the case for allegedly possessing Defence Ministry's secret documents and supplying them to foreign nationals.

Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Vidya Prakash extended their custody by 14 days after their judicial custody tenure in the Official Secrets Act violation case expired today.

The CBI had registered a fresh case against the couple on August 28 under the Official Secrets Act on a Defence Ministry complaint.

The duo were earlier remanded to the CBI custody for ten days on September 4 for their custodial interrogation and confrontation with incriminating documents collected so far as well as to ascertain the involvement of other persons, if any, in the case.

In an FIR registered on August 28, the CBI had said the Defence Ministry on June 6 had received a letter from Verma's business partner and Ganton Pvt Ltd's President C Edmond Allen with some documents annexed to it.

Upon verification, some of the documents were found to be "secret" and a complaint was made to the CBI by the ministry on August 27 following which a case under section 3 of the Official Secrets Act (passing sensitive information) and of criminal conspiracy under the Indian Penal Code was registered against Verma and his wife.

The CBI's case is that Verma utilised the services of Anca, the director of Ganton India Pvt Ltd as well as other officials of the firm to obtain secret defence documents unauthorisedly and then supplied them to foreign nationals.

Verma and Anca were first arrested and remanded in judicial custody in a corruption case involving alleged receipt of $530,000 by them from Rheinmetall Air Defence AG (RAD) for using their influence to stall the firm's blacklisting proceedings by Indian government.

After they were given bail in that case, they were arrested in an Enforcement Directorate's money laundering case and a forgery case, registered by CBI on a complaint made by Union Sports Minister Ajay Maken.