Australian court orders newspaper to stop publishing leaked Scorpene data

A court order compelled The Australian newspaper to cease publishing classified data on the Indian Navy's (IN's) Scorpene-class submarine programme from 30 August.

The New South Wales Supreme Court also instructed The Australian to remove portions of the classified documents from its website and to hand them over to French shipbuilder DCNS, which is licence-building the boats for the IN in Mumbai for USD3.5 billion, by 1 September.

"We are not publishing any more documents," journalist Cameron Stewart, who broke the story for The Australian , told New Delhi-based NDTV news channel ahead of a 1 September court hearing.

The court order followed a petition by DCNS to bar the newspaper from publishing additional extracts from the 22,400 pages of classified data that are reportedly in its possession.

janes