Navy Chief’s kin surfaces in security breach

According to the Navy, Shankaran’s company was blacklisted after an explosion in the fuel tank on board an Indian Navy ship in 1996 when it was conducting a ‘‘tank cleaning job.’’

The inquiry into the security breach in the DNO in July—involving leakage of information stored in computers in the war room—is headed by Rear Admiral Ganesh Mahadevan.

He is still to submit his report but highly placed sources said that the needle of suspicion points to three DNO officers supplying commercial information to Shank Ocean Engineering.

Replying to a detailed questionnaire sent by The Indian Express, the Naval Headquarters said: ‘‘Shankaran, an ex-Naval officer, is distantly related to the Chief of Naval Staff (CNS). This fact has been brought to the notice of the Raksha Mantri Pranab Mukherjee by the CNS himself.’’

While the Navy has admitted that the Inquiry Board had questioned several officers and sailors, it confirmed that Captain Kashyap Kumar, Commander V K Jha and Commander V. Rana had deposed before the board.

Though the Navy says that it would be ‘‘inappropriate’’ to comment on the issue prematurely, sources said the line of investigation is towards the direction of DNO officers passing on operational procurement procedure details to Shankaran.

It is learnt that the DNO was interested in procurement of small patrol craft for operations in the off-shore region and that the Mumbai firm was interested in the acquisition.

According to Naval Headquarters, the DNO does not deal in tendering process of ‘‘any kind’’ but confirmed that the process of procurement for small patrol craft ‘‘is presently in a stage where talking of tenders, etc is too premature and yet to commence.’’ ‘‘However, there is no connection between Shankaran’s commercial activities and the Naval procurement procedures, which are vetted at various levels including the Ministry of Defence,’’ the Naval Headquarters said.

The Indian Express visited the office of Shank Ocean Engineering in Colaba but Shankaran was not available. At its deserted office in Clark House, Nathalal Parekh Marg, two guards said they were not aware of who or where Shankaran was.

(With Shiv Aroor, New Delhi, and Prabhat Sharan, Mumbai)