Evidence of systematic Sensitive data leaked from navy's war room
Preeti Singhani
Aug. 25, 2005

For a long time some personnel in Indian Navy have helped in leaking sensitive information on a regular basis.

According to media sources, Sensitive data on procurement deals and information on air-conditioning plants for ships and submarines was passed to "commercial establishments" from the Indian Navy's war room, an internal probe has revealed.

The kingpin in the leak of information from the war room, the nerve centre in the directorate of naval operations, was the director himself, an officer of the rank of captain, according to the probe conducted by Rear Admiral Ganesh Madhavan.

Highly placed sources in the defence establishment said the officer had served abroad as a naval attaché and was a familiar figure in the diplomatic party circuit.

It is believed commercial data pertaining to procurement deals worth about Rs.20-40 million ($454,545-$909,090) was downloaded into a computer pen drive and transferred to various parties.

Equally worrying, a pen drive with at least 100 downloaded documents was recovered and officials feel more such "information sticks" could have made their way out of the war room.

Those who worked in the naval operations directorate, the sources said, reportedly sold no operational plans after reports of the sensitive leaks emerged early this month.

For the past two weeks, Madhavan, who heads the board of inquiry comprising four officials from naval headquarters, has been trying to get to the bottom of the leaks.

The director of naval operations, along with two commanders and a deputy director of naval operations, all of whom were initially placed under house arrest, were believed to be responsible for downloading commercial data and selling the information.

Sources said restrictions had been imposed on their movements till the submission of the inquiry report. Security has also been tightened in the war room.

The sources refused to disclose if Madhavan would recommend their suspension from service.

It is also reliably learnt that the naval top brass got wind of the "leaks" in January when a letter written by the "mistress" of one of the commanders described the "constant meetings of the officers as suspicious".

The woman later went a step further and warned the naval headquarters that the officers were selling classified information.

It was then, the sources said, that naval headquarters mounted surveillance on some officers and kept a tab on their mobile phones.

One person the officers kept in touch with regularly and also supplied information to was an employee of a huge, international air-conditioning company with products and services sold in over 125 countries.

The air-conditioning company employee was a former navy commander and had sought premature retirement in the mid-1990s. The information was given to him downloaded on memory sticks, the sources said.

"Whenever a naval officer got new information, he used to inform his client. The codename used was ''golf balls'' - meaning more memory sticks were available," a highly placed source told IANS.

Indian Navy chief Admiral Arun Prakash informed intelligence agencies about the leaks just before going abroad on a tour early this month. Officials said all personnel concerned with running and display of computer projections in the war room were being questioned in the ongoing probe.

What is bothering the navy top brass is that it is still to be ascertained how long the racket had been going on.

This is the second time in two years that a break-in at sensitive defence installations and theft of information from computers has been reported.

In August 2003, 18 encrypted computers were stolen from the heavily guarded scientific analysis office of the Defence Research Development Organisation (DRDO) at Metcalf house here.

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