Impact Of Crime May Pose A Serious Threat To National Security: Bombay HC Refuses To Suspend Sentence Of BrahMos Aerospace Employee

The Bombay High Court refused to suspend sentence of an employee working in BrahMos Aerospace Private Limited, Nagpur (BAPL) convicted under the Official Secrets Act, 1923.

The Nagpur Bench was dealing with a criminal application filed by the said employee seeking suspension of execution of sentence and enlargement on bail during pendency of appeal.

A Division Bench comprising Justice Vinay Joshi and Justice Vrushali V. Joshi observed, “Taking over all view of the matter, certainly this is not a case to form a prima facie opinion that the accused has fair chances of success in appeal. The issue largely relates to security and safety of the Country, which has to be seriously viewed. The impact of crime may pose a serious threat to the National security. In our view when the question of National security and safety arises, it is quite serious than the cases of gruesome murder. In the circumstances, we are not prepared to take a risk to put the National security and safety at risk.”

Senior Advocate S. Dave appeared on behalf of the applicant while APP A.B. Badar appeared on behalf of the respondents.

Brief Facts -

The Trial Court had sentenced the applicant/accused to undergo life imprisonment for the offence punishable under Section 66-F of the Information Technology Act (IT Act); to undergo rigorous imprisonment of 14 years for the offence punishable under Section 3[1][c] of the Official Secrets Act; and to undergo rigorous imprisonment for 3 years and pay fine of Rs.3000/- for the offence punishable under Section 5[1] [a], [b], [c], [d] and Section 5[3] of the Official Secrets Act. All the sentences were directed to run concurrently. The accused had joined BAPL as an Executive Trainee and then held various posts in the offices of BAPL at Hyderabad and Nagpur.

As per the prosecution case, the accused while working on various posts at BAPL, had unauthorizedly collected the secret, restricted classified data, sensitive documents, copied it secretly on his personal devise from the official computer, and retained the same in his personal laptop and hard disk. He was allegedly in contact with various foreign agents through social media applications and facilitated to leak the secret, restricted sensitive prohibited information relating to the defence. It was also the prosecution case that the accused was in contact with the fictitious Facebook accounts which were operated from Islamabad, Pakistan and had downloaded various applications sent by a woman through her linked-in-account and facilitated foreign buyers to have access to the secret, sensitive information relating to BrahMos Missiles.

The High Court in view of the above facts noted, “The forensic report indicates that the links which were already installed in the laptop of the accused remained active and were capable of sharing all the data to cloud base server. It is the evidence that during investigation, the police found total 19 files which were titled as ‘secret and restricted files’. Out of them, 16 files were titled as ‘Secret Files’ and 3 files were titled as ‘Restricted Files’. The accused was working as a Senior System Engineer with BAPL, which is under the control of Ministry of Defence.”

The Court said that despite various circulars, the accused disclosed his identity and his post and place of working in defence establishment. It added that there is perversity or glaring error committed by the Trial Court while reaching to the conclusion.

“Considering the seriousness of the crime, nature of evidence and its social impact, we are not inclined to accede the applicant’s urge for suspension of sentence and grant him bail. Having regard to above, we find that no case is made out to exercise our judicial discretion in suspending the execution of sentence”, it remarked.

Accordingly, the High Court rejected the criminal application.

Cause Title- Nishant Pradeep Agrawal v. Anti Terrorist Squad, Lucknow and another (Neutral Citation: 2024:BHC-NAG:9408-DB)

Appearance:

Applicant: Senior Advocate S. Dave and Advocate C.B. Barve.

Respondents: APP A.B. Badar

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