Pune: A special judicial magistrate first class (JMFC) court in Pune on Tuesday committed the alleged honey trap and spying case against a senior DRDO scientist to a special sessions court (ATS) after complying with a technical aspect regarding committal of case registered under the Official Secrets (OS) Act.The case is at the stage of final disposal of the scientist’s discharge plea and the pendency of this plea has held up the process of framing of charges against the scientist considering that the state anti-terrorism squad (ATS) filed a chargesheet against him on June 30, 2023. He is facing charges of misusing his official position to leak out classified information pertaining to national security to a Pakistani operative agent.The ATS had earlier filed the chargesheet directly before the special sessions court (ATS) following which the scientist filed a discharge plea. An issue cropped up during the hearing of this plea as to whether the sessions court can directly take cognizance of an offence under the OS Act as a discharge plea required application of mind.On March 16, additional sessions judge PY Ladekar returned the charge sheet to the investigating officer for presenting it before the special JMFC (ATS) while observing there was a bar under Section 193 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) on taking cognizance and the sessions court cannot jump to that stage and right away discharge the accused.As such, the matter came up before the special JMFC court (ATS), which took cognizance of the same and went on to commit the case to the special sessions court.Special public prosecutor Ujjwala Pawar told TOI, “The discharge plea of the accused has already been heard by the sessions court, which may now pass a final order on the same considering the committal of the case by the JMFC court.”The ATS has filed the chargesheet for offences under sections 3 (penalties for spying), 5 (1) (6) (a) (d) [wrongful communications of information) and 4 (communication with foreign agents to be evidence of commission of certain offences) of the Official Secrets Act. The ATS claimed that the arrested scientist had been in contact with a Pakistani operative through voice messages and video calls over WhatsApp.Pawar said, “The offence under section 3 (1) (c) of the OS Act is punishable by up to 14 years of imprisonment if related to defense establishments or classified information. As such, the same can be tried only by a special sessions court (ATS), post-committal by the JMFC court.”
