Police trap in India snares five for selling oil ministry papers

KARTIKAY MEHROTRA

NEW DELHI (Bloomberg) -- Police in India’s capital arrested five people for the alleged sale of stolen Oil Ministry documents to energy and consulting companies, in a night-time sting operation targeting crime close to the heart of government.

The group faked identification cards, used duplicate keys and disabled CCTV cameras to obtain the papers, according to a police statement late Thursday in New Delhi. An employee of billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries Ltd. was arrested for purchasing stolen files, the Press Trust of India reported. Reliance spokesman Tushar Pania declined to comment.

Police also raided the offices of a “few corporate houses,” the Times of India newspaper reported Thursday, without saying where it got the information.

Some of the men detained are current or former employees at Shastri Bhawan, the buildings that house government departments including the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, the police said. A car with an unauthorized sign declaring that the vehicle belongs to the government of India was also seized.

Allegations of graft and crime have long shadowed Indian officialdom, including past scandals over the sale of airwaves and the allocation of coal deposits. Prime Minister Narendra Modi swept to power in May last year partly on a pledge to fight corruption and improve the efficiency of the civil service.