4 Crime against Official Secrets

Definition (the Code's provisions and the official-secrets framework, by principle): the unauthorized obtaining, keeping, communicating or publishing of official information whosedisclosure is prejudicial to the state's security or public interest — the protected classes: defence and security information; classified diplomatic material; the statutorily protected records. Elements: the information's official and classified character; the unauthorized dealing (obtaining by improper means — the trespass, the hacking; or the keeper's breach — the official's leak; the publication by anyone knowing the classification); the prejudice-intent or knowledge (the security- damage element distinguishing the spy from the scholar).The statute family: the Code's state-secrets provisions; the special instruments (the security legislation's protected-places and protected-information heads; the archaic Official Secrets tradition the Ain-era inherited; the documents-offences of Unit 5 as the paper-layer).The tension (the unit's closing analysis): official secrets vs. the Right to Information(Constitution, Article 27; the Right to Information Act, 2064) — the citizen's right to information of public concern, the Act's proactive-disclosure and demand-disclosure architecture with its exemptions (the security exemption's contested breadth); the whistleblower's position (the public-interest disclosure vs. the oath's breach — the modern governance debate); the journalist's privilege (the source-protection principle vs. the secrets offence); the classification culture (over- classification — the bureaucrat's reflex — against the transparency constitutionalism). The exam's formulation: the security exemption must be read narrowly and specifically —…