Three accused including two government officials, arrested in the corporate espionage case for allegedly possessing "sensitive" documents relating to various ministries, on Thursday sought bail in a Delhi court citing grounds of parity.The three accused said they should be granted relief as most of the persons, who were arrested in a related matter, have already been given bail. Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Vivek Kumar Gulia after hearing part arguments fixed the case for May 25 for further submissions and order on the bail applications."Since the investigating officer as well as prosecutor are not present today, put up the matter for May 25," the court said. It also fixed June 24 for hearing arguments on framing of charges. The court was hearing the bail pleas of three accused-- 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.All three accused are in judicial custody. "Most of the accused who were arrested in the matter in the other FIR have already been given bail (by another court) even though charges against them were more serious," the counsel appearing for the accused, who had filed the bail applications last month, said.

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The court had earlier on May 7 taken cognisance of the charge sheet filed against the accused. The charge sheet was filed under various sections of the IPC, including 420 (cheating), 380 (theft in building), 411 (dishonestly receiving stolen property), 465 (forgery), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating), 471 (using forged documents as genuine), and 120B (criminal conspiracy).In the charge sheet, police has named 19 persons as witnesses in the case. The police had arrested Lokesh on February 23, claiming that "sensitive" documents pertaining to ministries of Coal, Power and others were recovered from his possession.The other two accused, Jitender and Vipan, were arrested on February 25 and their names figure in the same FIR. Another FIR related to the matter was registered by the Crime Branch under sections relating to trespass, theft, criminal conspiracy and fraud in this case.

It is separate from the one lodged in the Petroleum Ministry documents leak case in which police had on April 18 filed charge sheet against 13 persons, including five corporate executives. Eight of the 13 accused have been granted bail. 

The accused arrested earlier in that case were journalist Shantanu Saikia, Jubilant Energy's official Subhash Chandra, Shailesh Saxena of Reliance Industries Ltd, Vinay Kumar of Essar, Rishi Anand of Reliance ADAG, Cairns India's K K Nayak, Lalta Prasad, Rakesh Kumar, Prayas Jain, Ishwar Singh, Asharam, Rajkumar Chaubey and one Virender.

In the present case, the police had told the court earlier that some laptops, monitors, software and electronic data were recovered from the three accused. Some data, however, were found deleted from the laptops, the court was told.

It had claimed that Lokesh was getting around Rs 14,000 per month in his bank account from Noida-based consultancy firm Infraline Energy, one of the beneficiary companies, which suggest that he was an employee of the company.

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