The leaked documents in The Australian had mentions details about the “entire” combat capability of six Scorpene-class submarines DCNS had designed for India, variants of which are used by Malaysia and Chile ― should be investigated and verified first, the defense minister ministry stated.
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“We have asked DCNS (French submarine maker) to launch an urgent investigation into this”. The court granted a temporary injunction to French shipbuilder DCNS, which makes the submarines for India, after the company had filed a petition against the paper.
India signed a 3.5 billion United States dollars deal with French manufacturer DCNS for six Scorpene submarines in 2005 to be built in Mumbai with an Indian government-owned shipbuilder.
The Australian government said on Friday it had asked DCNS to take new security measures in Australia, where the company is locked in exclusive negotiations to build a new fleet of submarines for 50 billion Australian dollars ($38b).
Meanwhile, Indian Navy has set-up a high level committee to find out the extent of the leak and the damage to the Navy.
The newspaper will also have to remove documents from its website and give French firm DCNS all of the company material in its possession, the court order says.
The company is also seeking a court order to force The Australian to hand over the documents and remove them from its website.
The firm’s lawyer had yesterday told the newspaper that the publication of this “highly valuable document” causes a direct harm to DCNS and its customer in terms of spread of sensitive and restricted information, image and reputation.
In a series of tweets later he claimed the documents contained information on weapon systems as well, and said it would be published on Monday.
Around 22,400 pages of data was leaked from DCNS, which contains critical information of India’s Scorpene submarines.
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The Australian said it redacted the most sensitive details before publication.
