Corporate espionage:

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NEW DELHI: The leakgate probe reached the higher echelons of India Inc, with Delhi Police informally questioning Reliance Industries Limited president (corporate affairs) Shankar Adawal and seizing his computer during a quiet raid at his office on Thursday, sources told TOI.The offices of two other energy companies were also raided and documents seized.Adawal, who is also head of regulatory & corporate affairs at Reliance Jio, RIL’s 4G project, will soon be summoned formally for interrogation over the theft of classified information from central ministries, sources said. Cops are likely to field around 20 questions related to the case.Adawal was, in April 2002, arrested by the CBI on charges of leaking documents. A general manager (corporate affairs) at RIL at that time, he was arrested along with the group’s vice- president, A N Sethuraman, on the orders of a Delhi court. The case is sub judice.The police brass remained tightlipped on the issue. Despite several attempts to contact him, Adawal did not comment on the developments.Cops believe that a few senior-level executives of energy companies, whose employees have been arrested, played a role in the theft of documents from ministries. Police have said in the court that these companies made windfall gains due to the leaked data.The home ministry and the Intelligence Bureau have been taken into confidence over the imminent questioning of senior corporate executives in the case.The 2002 case, in which RIL executive Shankar Adawal and AN Sethuraman were arrested, related to the recovery of classified documents from RIL’s corporate office. Subsequently, a case was registered against the executives under the Official Secrets Act.The court had then also issued non-bailable warrants against group president V Balasubramaniam. A lower court had ordered framing of charges against RIL and the three alleged lobbyists. RIL, in turn, had challenged the order in the high court, where the matter is pending.Among the documents recovered from the RIL office at that time were details of a core group meeting on economic matters and the minutes of a meeting of the core group of secretaries on disinvestment, chaired by the cabinet secretary in 1998.