Solicitor General to RAW on spy case: Act but check all facts

Treading with extreme caution in the Rabinder Singh spy case, the Government has sought the opinion of its seniormost law officers on the ev...

Treading with extreme caution in the Rabinder Singh spy case, the Government has sought the opinion of its seniormost law officers on the evidence collected.

This followed the decision to file a criminal case under the Official Secrets Act (OSA) in which several officials of the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), besides the dismissed Joint Secretary, are likely to be named.

Earlier this month, a high-level RAW team held consultations with Solicitor General G E Vahanvati and shared with him the nature of evidence in the spy case, mostly in the form of surveillance tapes and confidential documents.

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Sources said that Vahanvati, after assessing the evidence, found sufficient grounds for filing an OSA case.

But he was said to have advised the agency to complete cross-verification and internal inquiries in the case of each and every individual before invoking OSA.

This explains the reason for the delay in registration of the case which was expected this month. According to officials, it may now happen next month.

The registration of the case was cleared by Cabinet Secretary B K Chaturvedi after which the Home Ministry issued orders, giving RAW the powers to handle investigations in the case.

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The Government now proposes to file a voluminous complaint in the competent court.

Ritu Sarin

Ritu Sarin is Executive Editor (News and Investigations) at The Indian Express group. Her areas of specialisation include internal security, money laundering and corruption. Sarin is one of India’s most renowned reporters and has a career in journalism of over four decades. She is a member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) since 1999 and since early 2023, a member of its Board of Directors. She has also been a founder member of the ICIJ Network Committee (INC). She has, to begin with, alone, and later led teams which have worked on ICIJ’s Offshore Leaks, Swiss Leaks, the Pulitzer Prize winning Panama Papers, Paradise Papers, Implant Files, Fincen Files, Pandora Papers, the Uber Files and Deforestation Inc. She has conducted investigative journalism workshops and addressed investigative journalism conferences with a specialisation on collaborative journalism in several countries. ... Read More

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