"Unfortunately, today if something is a classified or confidential information, it becomes most widely circulated. Even if you had disclosed it to your office it is an offence," a bench of Justices Arijit Pasayat and Mukundakam Sharma observed.

The bench passed the observation while dismissing the appeal filed by Ullash Bhattacharjee, an Indian Air Force sergeant, was sacked by the Government on February 10 2003 after his wife Munmun Bhattacharjee was allegedly found leaking information to suspected anti-national elements.

The IAF sergeant was working at Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh, in 2002 when his wife collected the confidential information from him and allegedly passed it on to their neighbours Sushil Kumar and Kailash, both alleged Pakistani intelligence agents.

Bhattacharjee had appealed against the dismissal in the Delhi High Court which dismissed his plea following which he appealed in the apex court.

Appearing for Bhattacharjee, counsel Aishwarya Bhati and Karan Singh Bhati claimed that he was innocent and the confession about his involvement in the leakage of confidential information was extracted from him under duress by the authorities.

According to the sergeant's counsel, the dismissal was illegal as the same was done after conducting an administrative inquiry instead of holding a court martial or a proper inquiry.

It was submitted that though a simultaneous investigation was conducted by the police which examined 26 persons including Sushil Kumar and Kailash, neither Bhattacharjee nor his wife Munmun were examined. This indicated the couple's innocence, the counsel said.