JASBIR SINGH Vs. STATE

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The petitioner cannot be said to be innocent and rather this evidence point towards his guilt under Section 3 of the Official Secrets Act 1923 looking especially to the visits of the petitioner to the aforesaid two libraries and inspecting there the secret and restricted documents-books under an identity card which though belonged to him while in service, ought to have been surrendered by him on his retirement, and was made use of by him or for eliciting information which could be detrimental and prejudicial to the security and interest of the State and advantageous to or foreign country. Furthermore, petitioner's disclosure and the consequent recovery of the defence/telephone directory.belonging to Lt. Genl. Pattangell from the house of petitioner's employer J.S. Gill and the petitioner developing friendly terms with Lt. Genl. Pattangell and thus visiting his house for telephone calls from that directory go to show that the petitioner stole the same from the house of Lt. Genl. Pattangell for onward transmission to his employer J. S. Gill and in this context the developing of intimacy by the petitioner with Lt. Genl. Pattangell looks quite meaningful especially when this directory was a restricted document and its contents were not to be communicated to any person who is not a Government official and the disclosure thereof to an unauthorised person like J. S. Gill is prejudicial to the security and interest of the State.

(2.) The prima-facie inference of guilt of the petitioner is reassured from the confessional statement dated 10-11-1983 of the co-accused Maj. Genl. F.D. Larkins (retired) who stated as follows :

(3.) Even though the aforesaid confession was retracted by the maker thereof and this being confession of a co-accused cannot be treated as substantive evidence, it can still be used as a reassuring factor regarding guilt of the petitioner which can be spelt out from the other evidence referred to above (vide Haricharan Kurmi v. State of Bihar, AIR 1964 S.C. 1184).