YASHWANT SINHA Vs. CENTRAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION

JUDGEMENT

(1.) A preliminary objection with regard to the maintainability of the review petition has been raised by the Attorney General on behalf of the respondents. The learned Attorney General contends that the review petition lacks in bona fides inasmuch as three documents unauthorizedly removed from the office of the Ministry of Defence, Government of India, have been appended to the review petition and relied upon by the review petitioners. The three documents in question are:

(2.) It is contented that the alleged unauthorized removal of the documents from the custody of the competent authority of the Government of India and the use thereof to support the pleas urged in the review petition is in violation of the provisions of Sections 3 and 5 of the Official Secrets Act, 1923. It is further contended that the documents cannot be accessed under the Right to Information Act in view of the provisions contained in Section 8(1)(a) of the said Act. Additionally, the provisions contained in Section 123 of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872 have been pressed into service and privilege has been claimed so as to bar their disclosure in the public domain. Section 3, 5(1) of the Official Secrets Act; Section 8(1)(a) and 8(2) of the Right to Information Act and Section 123 of the Evidence Act on which the learned Attorney has relied upon is extracted below.

(3.) The three documents which are the subject matter of the present controversy, admittedly, was published in 'The Hindu' newspaper on different dates in the month of February, 2019. One of the documents i.e. Note-18 of the Ministry of Defence was also published in 'The Wire' a member of the Digital Print Media.