New Delhi, March 4 -- The Supreme Court recently directed the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to decide within a month whether to provide "sensitive" documents to a retired Army officer facing trial under the Official Secrets Act (OSA) for exposing alleged irregularities within the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) in a book published in 2007.

In a hearing on Friday, the top court said confidentiality cannot be grounds to deny the veteran these documents if they are the basis for prosecuting him under OSA. A bench of justices JK Maheshwari and Atul S Chandurkar said: "If you (CBI) are using the documents against him, you cannot say they are confidential. You find a way out without inviting an order from this court."

The court was h...