Ex-RAW official given bail in spying case

Former RAW official Brigadier (Retd) Ujjal Dasgupta, who is accused of passing sensitive information to an American woman diplomat, was today granted bail by a city court here nearly four years after his arrest.

Dasgupta is the last of the three accused to get bail in the case. Commodore (Retd) Mukesh Saini, who was working with the National Security Council Secretariat and a senior system
analyst Shib Shankar Paul at the secretariat, who were his co-accused, have already been released on bail by the Tis Hazari court here.

They were arrested in 2006 by the Delhi police special cell on charges of passing secret information to American diplomat Rosanna Minchew.

Additional sessions judge Inder Jeet Singh granted the bail subject to his furnishing a personal bond of Rs75,000 and a surety bond of the same amount, with the conditions that he will not leave the country and he will not contact any of the witnesses of the case.

While granting bail, the court took note of the "unblemished" record of his service and re-employment as director, Computer Cell at the Research and Analysis Wing on the basis of his experience.

Dasgupta was looking after the development of a 'Anveshak', a database management system.

The court, in its "prima facie" observation, said Central Forensic Sciences Laboratory analysis of seized hard disk showed that that computer files related to Anveshak were last accessed in March 2005. 

The American Diplomat was given visa in August, 2005 to coordinate Indo-US Cyber Security Forum.