A retired officer of the Department of Electronics and another person, who were charged with leaking “secret defence documents” to foreign agents, were acquitted by a Delhi court in a three-decade-old espionage case.

The alleged secret documents were on ‘Operational Requirement of Utility helicopters for the Army and the User/Evaluation Trial Report on RATAC-S Battlefield Surveillance Radar (BFSR), Phase-I’.

The court acquitted N. W. Nerurkar, then adviser to the Department of Electronics, and Aditya Kumar Jajodia in the case, saying the Central Bureau of Investigation had failed to prove the conspiracy angle.

“There were a large number of missing links and a total failure on the part of the prosecution to prove that the documents on ‘Operational Requirement of Utility helicopters for the Army and the User/Evaluation Trial Report on RATAC-S Battlefield Surveillance Radar [BFSR], Phase-I’ were declared classified secret documents,” Special CBI Judge Kamini Lau said, while acquitting the duo.

“Because the word secret was written on the documents, it would not make it so, particularly when details of the equipment and its literature were readily available and published in magazines and newspapers, and global tenders were invited,” the Judge added.

“Due care and caution had not been taken to keep the concerned documents in safe custody and the approach of keeping them open showed that they did not contain any strategic or sensitive information which would be useful to any enemy or the disclosure of which was likely to affect the sovereignty and integrity of India,’’ the Judge further said.

The CBI had lodged a case in the matter in 1987 on a complaint by a courier company in Delhi that

certain secret documents related to defence matter were being dispatched by the accused.

There were three more accused in the case. Two of them died during the trial, while the third was earlier discharged by the court at the time of charge framing.