Official Secrets Act (India) The Official Secrets Act 1923 is India's anti-espionage act held over from

Briti sh colonisation. It states clearly that any action which involves helping an ene my state against India. It also states that one cannot approach, inspect, or eve n pass over a prohibited government site or area. According to this Act, helping the enemy state can be in the form of communicating a sketch, plan, model of an official secret, or of official codes or passwords, to the enemy. The disclosur e of any information that is likely to affect the sovereignty and integrity of I ndia, the security of the State, or friendly relations with foreign States, is p unishable by this act. Contents 1 Prosecution and penalties 2 Criticism o o 2.1 Conflict with right to information 2.2 Iftikhar Gilani case 3 Boost to Press Freedom 4 See also 5 References 6 External links Prosecution and penalties Punishments under the Act range from three to fourteen years imprisonment. A per son prosecuted under this Act can be charged with the crime even if the action w as unintentional and not intended to endanger the security of the state. The Act only empowers persons in positions of authority to handle official secrets, and others who handle it in prohibited areas or outside them are liable for punishm ent. In any proceedings against a person for an offence under this Act, the fact that he has been in communication with, or attempted to communicate with a fore ign agent, whether within or without India is relevant and enough to necessitate prosecution. Journalists also have to help members of the police forces above t he rank of the sub-Inspector and members of the Armed forces with investigation regarding an offence, up to and including revealing his sources of information ( If required). Under the Act, search warrants may be issued at any time if the ma gistrate feels that based on the evidence in front of them there is enough dange r to the security of the state. Uninterested members of the public may be exclud ed from court proceedings if the prosecutions feels that any information which i s going to be passed on during the proceedings is sensitive.

This also includes media; so the journalists will not be allowed to cover that p articular case. When a company is seen as the offender under this Act, everyone involved with the management of the company including the board of directors can be liable for punishment. In the case of a newspaper everyone including the edi tor, publisher and the proprietor can be jailed for an offence. Criticism Conflict with right to information In the OSA clause 6, information from any governmental office is considered offi cial information, hence it can be used to override freedom of information reques ts. This has drawn harsh criticism. Iftikhar Gilani case In June 2002, journalist Iftikhar Gilani was, arrested for violating the OSA 192 3. He was charged under the OSA, with a case under the Obscenity Act added to it . The first military report suggested that the information he was accused of hol ding was "secret" despite being publicly available. The second military intellig ence report contradicted this, stating that there was no "official secret". Even after this, the government denied the opinion of the military and was on the ve rge of challenging it when the contradictions were exposed in the press. The mil itary reported that, "the information contained in the document is easily availa ble" and "the documents carries no security classified information and the infor mation seems to have been gathered from open sources". On January 13, 2003, the government withdrew its case against him to prevent having two of its ministries having to give contradictory opinions. Gilani was released the same month. E.G. 1) On the 10th of March 2003, 50 MPs (Members of Parliament) wrote a petition to th e (then) deputy Prime Minister, Shri. L.K.Advani, directing his attention to the unwarranted arrest and detention of Iftikar Gilani, the Chief of Bureau of Kash mir Times under the `draconian' Official Secrets Act, 1923. The journalist had been unjustly imprisoned for 7 months without any substantial proof until finally rel eased when the court ruled that there was no case against him. The petition also highlighted the large number of cases registered under the same Act (there were 31 cases in Delhi alone that year) and the expressed a concern over the Act bei ng misused by Government officials. And they were right. This is only one of the numerous instances of the power of the Official Secrets Act falling into injudi cious hands. In 1988, an award winning naval scientist, Dr. Buddhi Kota Subbarao was kept in prison for 5 years on the charge of smuggling important documents c ontaining the defence and atomic secrets of India out of the country under the O fficial Secrets Act. After long drawn out sojourns in and out of the Courts, the scientist was released as it was finally found that the documents really were h is Ph.D thesis. His only crime had been that he had

dared to stand against a few powerful personalities of the scientific world by p roposing a Selection Committee to overlook the BARC (give full form to the abbre viation) to Rajiv Gandhi. Similarly in 1988, the Gujarat Government clamped the Official Secrets Act in 12 villages for almost 5 months due to the rising upheav al against the Sardar Sarovar Dam. The leader of the Narmada Bachao Aandolan, Me dha Patkar, claimed that the Government was quietly raising the height of the da m, hence endangering the homes and livelihood of the surrounding villagers. She was immediately booked under the Official Secrets Act for having leaked State se crets to the public. This outrageous action by the Gujarat Government drove the media into a frenzy resulting in her release the subsequent day. As the British left India in 1947, they left behind a legacy of laws that had been introduced o nly to suppress the voice of the Indian people, the most controversial being the Official Secrets Act of 1923. Ironically, as India took its governance into it own hands and became a democracy, the same Act was kept intact-the Act that viol ates the very principles of democracy. Even though the Government justifies the Act by maintaining that it is required to safeguard the secrets of the State, ma ny argue that it is just being used as a cover-up for illegal activities, blocki ng the people of the country and, more importantly, the media out. What is ironi cal is the fact that even though the British introduced the law, they amended it in 1989 to bring more accountability and transparency into the governance. Indi a and Pakistan, however, still adhere to the outdated law and there doesn't seem t o be any possibility of its amendment in near future. All is not lost, however. The judiciary is fast taking matters into its own hands and is examining cases l odged under the OSA very closely. In fact, in February 2009, a Delhi High Court ruled that making public a document merely labelled `secret' will not make a journal ist guilty of violating the Act which serves as a huge boost for the freedom of press and expression. As the law is in direct contrast to the RTI (Right to Info rmation) Act, there is an immediate need to repeal the law or amend it so that i t only safeguards the information that could put the security of the country in jeopardy. Currently, the OSA can hold an RTI application null and void, which ne eds to change quickly. Only then will democracy and accountability move forward. E.G. 2) Computer case: Army Major to be booked under Official Secrets Act NEW DELHI: An Army Major, who is being questioned in connection with the transfe r of sensitive files from his personal computer to a Pakistani ISI operative, wi ll be booked under the Official Secrets Act (OSA) even as a joint team of Milita ry Intelligence and National Investigation Agency (NIA) is trying to solve the m ystery as to how some of the files from his computer got deleted when it was in custody of the authorities for probe. Suspecting that somebody might have delibe rately deleted the files after the Major's computer was seized to skirt the enti re probe, the joint team will question others as well who are believed

to have passed certain top-secret files to the officer over a period of time. "T he Major could not have got such files without the help of his colleagues and se niors in different wings. One or more of them might have tried to fiddle with hi s computer when it was seized for probe," said a senior home ministry official. He said that the forensic report of the CFSL, Hyderabad, had clearly pointed out that certain files got deleted after the seizure of the Major's computer. "The files cannot vanish on their own when the computer was not connected to any exte rnal link," said the official. The NIA may book the Major -- posted in the Andam an and Nicobar Tri-Service Command -under the National Security Act (NSA) or the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act if it gets some details about the possibil ity of his being part of a spy ring'. "The government has already asked the NIA to widen the ambit of the ongoing probe," said the officer adding the entire ep isode certainly does not look like a simple case of hacking at this stage. An Ar my officer, meanwhile, said: "It is a joint interrogation and probe. Let the fin al report come. We do not know anything about any deletion from the computer har d disc." The Indian authorities were alerted about the episode by the United Sta tes after some intercepts showed the picture of a brigadier, on a training cours e in the US, being dispatched to Pakistan from the computer of a user based in A &N Islands. The computer was traced to the Army Major who during his questioning said that it could have been hacked as he was using the internet. He was then l et off and sent back to his post. Later the probe raised questions as to how a M ajor could have got such information in his computer. He was then asked to repor t back to Delhi where he is now being questioned by a team of NIA and Military I ntelligence officials. E.G.3) Court summons top Reliance officials in OSA case Onkar Singh in New Delhi A Delhi court on Friday took cognizance of the Central Bureau of Investigation complaint against Reliance Industries and three of its t op officials, including group President V Balasubramaniam, under the Official Se crets Act and issued summons to them for April 29. Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Sangita Dhingra Sehgal summoned Balasubramaniam, group Vice-President A N Sethu raman and Corporate Affairs General Manager Shekhar Adawal to appear before the court on April 29, CBI sources said. The court's direction came after a marathon in-camera hearing which virtually ran the whole day. The court took cognizance of the complaint filed by the CBI after the agency counsel clarified that the ca se was not time-barred.

Meanwhile, when contacted, a Reliance spokesperson declined to comment on the de velopment. The CBI had started probe into the matter after Delhi police recovere d four sensitive documents pertaining to internal decisions of the Cabinet from a Reliance office in October 1998 while investigating the Romesh Sharma case, th ey said. The CBI claimed the secret documents were recovered from a 'locked offi ce table drawer' of the group's office located at a five-star hotel in New Delhi , which could help the industrial group in its business. "The initial searches w ere conducted by the Delhi police at the Reliance offices in Hotel Le Meridien i n New Delhi on October 28, 1998 during which certain important documents were se ized. On the basis of those documents a case under the Official Secrets Act was registered against the three accused. The case was then handed over to the CBI w hich conducted raids on November 13, 1998 at six places in Delhi and Mumbai, sea rched the offices and residential premises of the accused and recovered some mor e documents," CBI spokesman S M Khan had said on April 2. The agency alleged tha t the said documents were 'crucial to the company's business interest' and they were 'used' by them, the sources said. The CBI has charged Reliance and its offi cials under Sections 5(4) and 5(2) of Official Secrets Act and section 120-B (Cr iminal Conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code for allegedly possessing secret Cabi net papers, they said. The case had led to questions being asked on whether Reli ance can now bid for the government's stake in any of the public sector units th at are up for divestment. The guidelines for disqualifying a company from biddin g for buying government stake in a PSU require that "for disqualification on the ground of non-security related offences, there must in fact be, inter alia, a c onviction by a country of law." However, the divestment ministry had said on Apr il 3 that Reliance would not be disqualified from bidding for public sector unde rtakings, including Indian Petrochemicals Corporation Ltd, on the basis of the C BI charges. "We have examined the matter. Reliance would not be disqualified as the charges against it do not relate to national security. As per guidelines for divestment, in the case of non-security related matters, a charge-sheet is not enough to disqualify the bidder," Divestment Minister Arun Shourie had told repo rters in New Delhi. "If the charges relate to security, then a charge-sheet is e nough, but in non-security related matters, conviction by court is necessary for disqualification," he said. The minister said Reliance has been charged under t he Official Secrets Act for possessing documents pertaining to classification of excise duty rates, India's response to economic sanctions and government's view on monopoly clause in divestment. Reliance officials are charged under Sections 5(2) and 5(4) for possession of secret official documents and not under Section 5(3) pertaining to espionage and passing on of national secrets

to the enemy, Shourie said. Shourie's statement had cleared the mist around Reli ance's bid for acquiring 26 per cent government stake in IPCL in which state-run refiner Indian Oil is also in race. However, the court's summons on Friday has given a new twist to the case. Earlier on Friday, reports said that Attorney Gen eral Soli Sorabjee is understood to have told the government that Reliance could not be disqualified from bidding for public sector units as a CBI complaint was different from a CBI charge-sheet. The divestment ministry has said in an inter nal note, prepared after consultation with the attorney general, that "to the ex tent that the complaint relates to offences that are not related to the security and integrity of the country, the complaint itself would not have the effect of disqualifying a company." The secretary's note on the issue of Central Bureau o f Investigation filing complaint against Reliance and three of its officials und er the Official Secrets Act, said: "The attorney general also drew my attention to a distinction that has been obscured in our guidelines. He pointed out that a 'complaint' - whether by an individual or by an organ of the government, is str ictly speaking, different from a charge-sheet." Unlike a complaint, a charge-she et is one that has been framed by a court of law and judicial mind has been exer cised. "This is an ambiguity which we will have to deal with at some stage," sou rces quoting the note said. Additional inputs: PTI, UNI E.G.4) Sacked Haj panel chief to be tried under Official Secrets Act Utkarsh Anand Posted: Apr 27, 2008 at 0329 hrs IST New Dehi, April 26 Sacked Udaipur's Haj Committee chief Moinuddin Rizvi is set to face trial along with a Pakistan national in connection with an espionage case a s a Delhi court has framed penal charges against the duo under the Official Secr ets Act. Additional Sessions Judge H S Sharma recently ordered for initiating th e trial of the accused by starting the recording of the prosecution witnesses in the case from August 4. Rizvi, a former UP PWD official based at Udaipur in Raj asthan, and Mohd Yusuf, a Pakistan national, have been charged for their alleged offences of spying and executing a criminal conspiracy prejudicial to the safet y and interests of India. On May 25 last year, the Special Cell had arrested 62year-old Rizvi on charges of handing over sensitive maps of military installatio ns to the Pakistani agent Yusuf. Rizvi was arrested from hotel Romana near Jama Masjid here when he was allegedly handing over the maps to Yusuf. His son, Ghula m Dastgir, was also present with him.

Three days after his arrest, he was removed from his post by the Rajasthan Haj C ommittee.After a series of raids at Rizvi's residence in Gujarat and Hyderabad, th e police had also arrested Rizvi's son Dastgir, claiming there were sufficient evi dence pointing to his complicity in the espionage network as well. Dastgir was, however, exonerated of all the charges by the court on March 28 for want of evid ence. As per the police, during his visit to Pakistan in 2006, Rizvi had met a f ew persons in Karachi, who convinced him to hand over the maps of military insta llations in Udaipur and Bikaner. Meanwhile, Rizvi, who has been in custody since his arrest, and his son Dastgir moved applications in the court for returning t heir personal articles recovered during their searches. ASJ Sharma then directed the Station Officer (SHO) of the Special Cell to return their articles to them on the next date as the same were not required for investigation anymore. E.G.5) I am being framed, says Madhuri Gupta New Delhi: Embassy staffer turned alleged Pakistan spy Madhuri Gupta has been se nt to 14 days in judicial custody. She was produced in the Tis Hazari court here Saturday morning as her police custody ended Saturday. Gupta has been booked un der Sections 3, 6, and 5 of the Official Secrets Act and charged with divulging important information to enemy country. The maximum punishment under this is 14 years. She was arrested last week for allegedly passing on information to the IS I. She told investigators she did this not for money but to teach the IFS a less on and because ISI agent Rana was her friend. Police are verifying her claim by going through her bank accounts in both countries. Madhuri claimed the ISI agent Rana was not her only handler. She says a man named Jamshed was also in close t ouch with her. Rana and Jamshed both reportedly tried tap her through two Pakist ani journalists before 2007 but finally succeeded towards the end of 2008. Gupta 's confessions will be shared with the Ministry of External Affairs to verify im portance of the information she passed on. Her computer records will also be exa mined. She has been sent to 14 days of judicial custody till May 15. Madhuri's l awyer Joginder Dahia said she had told him that she is innocent and is being fra med in the espionage case. "I have been framed in this case and I am innocent," she told the lawyer. The police wanted custody of two days more on the grounds t hat they want to confront her with the report which has been brought from Pakist an but the court declined, added the lawyer. The police told the court that they need to verify what Madhuri had said earlier that she got no money. Who is Madh uri Gupta Madhuri Gupta was working for the Indian High Commission in Islamabad. She was recently promoted from Urdu interpreter to Second Secretary in Press an d Information department. She was called back to India on pretext of discussing ongoing SAARC summit in Bhutan. After interrogation, she was handed over to the Delhi Police. She partially leaked India's strategic plans in Afghanistan to her Pakistan aides. Gupta was meeting Pakistani ISI officers, also sent emails to h er Pakistani handlers from fake accounts. Earlier she had postings in Baghdad, K uala Lumpur and UN mission in Africa. E.G.6)

Attacks on the Press 2003: India Although India is the world's largest democracy, with a diverse and expanding me dia, government authorities remained sensitive to criticism in the press in 2003 . Officials harassed journalists through lawsuits, using restrictive laws govern ing criminal defamation, contempt of court, and national security to silence rep orters' accounts of corruption. Meanwhile, violence in the disputed state of Kas hmir continued to endanger journalists. In the southern state of Tamil Nadu, the respected English-language daily The Hindu faced a slew of lawsuits from the st ate's chief minister, a former actress known by her first name, Jayalalitha. In April, the minister expelled 43 opposition members from the state legislature an d briefly jailed them. When The Hindu ran two articles and an editorial lambasti ng her actions, Jayalalitha responded by filing as many as 17 separate criminal defamation cases against The Hindu, according to the paper's editor, Narasimhan Ram, known as N. Ram. Another editor and the publisher are named in all the case s, along with eight staff members who are cited in different individual cases ag ainst the paper. If they are convicted, the journalists face up to 17 two-year s entences each, which could be served either concurrently or consecutively. Furth er pressuring the paper, on November 7, the Tamil Nadu legislature ordered The H indu's five senior editors, as well as an editor from the Tamil-language newspap er Murasoli, jailed for 15 days each. The lawmakers passed a resolution formally charging the journalists with breach of privilege and "gross contempt" of the l egislature because their articles "cast a slur on the chief minister's actions." India's Supreme Court halted the order on November 10, but the defamation cases against The Hindu continued. On December 15, The Hindu mounted a legal challeng e against the criminal defamation law in the Supreme Court, arguing that the law violates the free speech provisions in the Indian Constitution. By year's end, Jayalalitha had filed three additional criminal defamation cases against The Hin du. In the southeastern state of Karnataka, 30 journalists from 11 newspapers we re charged on March 17 with contempt of court for reporting on an alleged sex sc andal that occurred in November 2002 involving three judges from the state's Hig h Court. Although the Karnataka High Court ruled on October 23 that each journal ist would be tried separately, the Supreme Court temporarily suspended proceedin gs against the journalists on November 18. The Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA ), which is designed to protect India's national security, was enacted in April 2002. The law allows police to demand any information they believe could help to curb terrorism, and local journalists remain concerned that it could infringe o n their rights. Although the act was meant specifically to fight Islamic militan ts in areas like Kashmir, it has mainly been used in other states, including Tam il Nadu. R.R. Gopal, editor of the Tamillanguage magazine Nakkheeran, became the first journalist to be arrested under POTA on April 11, 2003, when he was accus ed of aiding a banned Tamil militant group because he allegedly possessed some o f the group's leaflets at the time of his arrest. Gopal denies the charges and a ccuses Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalitha of trying to punish him for his art icles exposing corruption in her administration. The Madras High Court ordered G opal released on bail on December 20. A Judicial Committee is scheduled to meet in January 2004 to review the legality of the Tamil Nadu government's use of POT A against Gopal.

On July 27, 2003, a group of journalists from the now defunct online news agency Tehelka.com were charged under the Official Secrets Act, a draconian, colonialera law, for possessing "secret documents" deemed harmful to the state. The char ges stemmed from a story titled "Are Dutch Innocent?" that ran on the Web site o n October 9, 2000. India's Home Ministry claimed that the story contained inform ation from secret government file number 11011/40/99, titled "Dutch Interest in India's Fringe Politics," which included the minutes of a confidential governmen t meeting with the Dutch ambassador. The government alleged that Tehelka.com rep rinted the minutes almost verbatim from the secret file. At year's end, the case against the Web site had not been heard in court. That was not the first time I ndian officials had targeted Tehelka.com. In 2001, the site made headlines when it obtained a video of senior politicians from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) accepting bribes. Revenge from officials came in 2002, when two journalis ts from the site were arrested and later released on bail. Iftikhar Gilani, the New Delhi bureau chief for the Jammu-based newspaper Kashmir Times, was also cha rged under the Official Secrets Act. He was arrested in June 2002 and jailed for seven months for allegedly possessing classified documents. The documents in Gi lani's possession, which were about military operations, were actually readily a vailable to the public on the Internet. The charges against him were eventually dropped, and he was released on January 13, 2003. Despite peace efforts in Kashm ir, which both India and Pakistan claim, violence increased in the disputed terr itory. Journalists have long been vulnerable to attack, and 2003 was no exceptio n. In April, when the prime ministers of India and Pakistan made a conditional a greement to hold peace talks, a surge of violence killed at least 30 people in 1 0 days. On April 26, separatist militants detonated a car bomb in front of the o ffices of the state broadcasters Doordarshan Television and Radio Kashmir, which the militants view as mouthpieces for the Indian government. Five people, inclu ding three separatist gunmen and two security guards, were killed in an ensuing gunfight. Four days later, on April 29, a local news service reported a threat f rom the militant group Tehrik-ul-Mujahideen, which accuses local journalists of being on the payroll of Indian intelligence agencies. The militants wrote, "We i nform such journalists that they will be killed if they fail to mend their ways. " Two journalists were killed in India in 2003, one of them in Kashmir. On Janua ry 31, Parvaz Mohammed Sultan, editor of the independent wire service News and F eature Alliance (NAFA), based in Srinagar, the summer capital of Jammu and Kashm ir State, was shot and killed at his office by unidentified gunmen. Sultan's col leagues believe that he was targeted because of his work, although he had receiv ed no known threats before his killing and no one has claimed responsibility for the murder. Wire services like NAFA are frequently under pressure from both sid es of the conflict. Since the fighting in Kashmir erupted into a civil war in 19 89, ten journalists have been killed there, according to CPJ research. No one ha s been brought to justice in any of these cases. The other journalist killed in India in 2003, Parmanand Goyal, was shot dead in his home north of the capital, Delhi. The Tribune newspaper reported that Goyal's son claims to have overheard men threatening his father to stop writing about a local political figure and th e police, but the

motive behind the murder has not yet been determined. The deep-rooted tensions b etween India's Hindu majority and Muslim minority populations are exploited by l ocal leaders for political gain. In February 2002, sectarian riots swept through the western state of Gujarat and killed hundreds, but the attacks remained a co ntroversial subject for the Indian media in 2003. Journalists, diplomats, and hu man rights groups have reported that much of the violence was actually organized and encouraged by political leaders and groups associated with the ruling BJP. Journalists who covered the violence were vulnerable to attack by the unruly mob s, as well as to harassment and assault by police who did not want evidence of t heir complicity in the attacks publicized. In 2003, officials continued their ef forts to silence stories about the riots. In March, India's Central Board of Fil m Certification, which has the authority to alter or ban movies it deems controv ersial, censored a Hindu-language documentary called "Aakrosh" (Cry of Anguish), which featured interviews with survivors of the communal violence. In the lette r denying certification to the film's producers, the board wrote that "the film depicts violence and reminds the people about the Gujarat riots last year. It sh ows the Government and Police in a bad light. The overall impact of the film is negative as it leads to communal hatred." With its population of 1 billion peopl e and low literacy rate, India increasingly gets its news from a wide variety of satellite and cable television channels. According to the ratings service TAM M edia Research, India's television news audience has grown 80 percent in the last two years. As many as six new 24-hour cable news channels were scheduled to be on the air by the end of 2003, in addition to the existing news channels TV Toda y, NDTV, BBC, and CNN. The Indian government still controls most nonsatellite te levision and radio stations through the public broadcaster Prasar Bharati. Inter national media companies, including Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, covet acc ess to India's expanding news audience. The Hong Kong-based Star Group, a subsid iary of News Corporation and Asia's largest broadcaster, was planning to launch its own satellite news channel, Star News, in India in April. But on March 18, t he Cabinet voted to tighten restrictions on foreign access to news channels, cap ping ownership at 26 percent. By year's end, Indian officials had worked out a d eal to facilitate the channel's launch after Star News partnered with an Indian company, but the Information and Broadcasting Ministry continued to delay final approval for the project. E.G.7) Sanction delay in `spy' case ANANYA SENGUPTA

Madhuri Gupta outside a New Delhi court on Saturday. (PTI) New Delhi, May 15: The foreign ministry is yet to send the mandatory sanction fo r the prosecution of spy Madhuri Gupta three weeks after her arrest, Delhi police today told a magistrate. Following this, the court extended Gupta's judicial reman d for another 14 days. Gupta, 53, a middle-level diplomat posted at India's Islama bad mission, has been in Tihar jail since her arrest in the last week of April f or allegedly passing on information to Pakistani intelligence. Under Section 197 of the Criminal Procedure Code, public servants accused of committing an offenc e in the discharge of their official duties cannot be prosecuted except with the sanction of competent authorities. Without a sanction, no chargesheet can be file d and no court can take cognisance of such offence. The competent authority in Gup ta's case is the secretary, ministry of external affairs. It's not clear whether the foreign ministry or the police are to blame for the delay. Police sources claim ed that the force's special cell had sent an application to the ministry but did n ot say when. If the police cannot file a chargesheet within 90 days of her arres t, the court is likely to grant bail. The sanction rule is meant to protect judg es, magistrates and public servants from frivolous prosecution, or to avoid pros ecution if that is deemed not to be in the public interest as may well happen in the case of an alleged mole. In case the foreign ministry decides it is too ris ky to prosecute Gupta, whose remand hearings are being held behind closed doors, it has to let her off with, perhaps, a punishment posting following a departmenta l inquiry. So far, the ministry has not suspended her or taken any other action. Last year, then Chief Justice of India K.G. Balakrishnan had said the system of sanctions had obstructed the course of justice in some cases and given public s ervants a sense of impunity. The legislative intent behind the requirement for such a prior sanction was to discourage frivolous complaints and vexatious litigatio n against public servants. However, it is perceived in many quarters that these provisions contribute to a climate of impunity where the requisite sanction is e ither delayed or denied by higher executive authorities, Justice Balakrishnan had told a seminar on the fight against corruption. Gupta's lawyer Joginder Dahiya sa id: Delhi police today informed the court they had filed an application under Sec tion 197 of the CrPC seeking sanction for the prosecution of the woman officer. H e added that Gupta, booked under the Official Secrets Act, had sought a copy of the first information report registered against her E.G.8)