The Supreme Court on Wednesday allowed the admissibility of three documents connected to the Dassault Rafale fighter jet deal as evidence in the review petitions against a 14 December 2018 judgement by the apex court.
Dismissing the Centre’s “preliminary objections”, a bench of Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi and Justices SK Kaul and KM Joseph was unanimous that the review petitions should be heard in their own merit.
The plea filed by former Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha, journalist Arun Shourie and lawyer Prashant Bhushan sought the recall and review of 2018 judgment giving clean chit to the government in the deal.
In their plea, the three had annexed three documents. The government claimed “privilege” over the leaked Rafale documents citing Official Secrets Act, 1923. The contended that the documents were stolen but later backtracked, and changed its stance saying that they were “unauthorisedly photocopied” and constituted “penal offences under the Indian Penal Code including theft”.
Bhushan had termed the Centre’s objections as “mala fide”, saying that it was “not to prevent any harm to the security or defence of the country but to prevent the court from taking these documents into consideration while deciding the issue before it”.
Reacting to the SC verdict, Shourie said, “Our argument was that because the documents relate to Defence you must examine them. You asked for these evidence and we have provided it. So Court has accepted our pleas and rejected the arguments of the government.”
The Supreme Court has also said “as far as the question of hearing of review plea on Rafale judgement is concerned, it will give a detailed hearing later on”.
CJI Gogoi said that the date for the hearing of the review petition by Sinha, Shourie and Bhushan would be given by a separate order. Justice KM Joseph gave a separate but concurring judgment.
The court had earlier reserved its verdict on March 14 after the Centre raised objections over the validity of these leaked documents.