Punjab & Haryana High Court Grants Bail To Sepoy Accused Of Leaking Secret Information To Pakistan

The Punjab and Haryana High Court has granted bail to a sepoy accused of leaking sensitive secret information to Pakistan in lieu of illegal gratification.

While granting regular bail to the accused, Justice Gurvinder Singh Gill said, "...apart from one WhatsApp text message, which also cannot be said to be incriminating, nothing else could be pointed out which could be said to connect the petitioner with the allegations made in the FIR."

A secret information was received by Haryana Police in 2021 that Rohit Kumar, who was serving in Indian Army as a Sepoy, had been leaking sensitive secret information to Pakistan in lieu of illegal gratification, a raid was conducted at his house in Village Korwa Khurd, Tehsil Naraingarh, District Ambala and he was apprehended.

It was further the case of prosecution that two mobile phones were recovered from the petitioner and during the course of investigation it transpired that illegal gratification had been passed on to petitioner's father and had been credited in his bank account.

The counsel for the petitioner submitted that the petitioner has falsely been implicated in the present case and that there is no evidence worth credence to show that he had been passing on any kind of information to Pakistan or to anybody else much less for any kind of gratification.

Opposing the petition, the State counsel submitted that during the course of investigation, the call details were scrutinized, copies whereof have been annexed with the reply filed by State on the last date of hearing. It has been submitted that the petitioner was regularly in touch with one Shruti Parry, who was infact operating from Pakistan and was also having Facebook account by the same name.

After hearing the submissions, the Court noted that on the last date of hearing he State counsel had informed that although nothing incriminating could be found upon scrutinizing the call-details, but the data recovered from the mobile phones, which is to the tune of 48 GB, was yet to be scrutinized. Consequently, the Court had directed the State to take necessary steps in this regard.

Pursuant to the directions, the State had filed a report, indicating that nothing incriminating was found.

Court said petitioner has been behind bars for a substantial period of more than 21⁄2 years and as on date only 1 prosecution witness out of 15 had been examined. Under these circumstances, "particularly the fact that the State could not point out any piece of incriminating evidence against the petitioner and also the long custody of petitioner", Court said further detention would not be justified.

In the light of the above, the Court granted the regular bail.

Mr. Keshav Pratap Singh, Advocate with Mr. Tarun Hooda, Advocate and

Mr. Vishal Singh, Advocate for the petitioner.

Mr. Munish Sharma, DAG, Haryana.

Title: Rohit Kumar v. State of Haryana

Citation: 2024 LiveLaw (PH) 255

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