The defense ministry said it had taken up the matter with the French government after The Australian newspaper splashed a story on Wednesday saying it had obtained more than 22,000 pages of details about the Scorpene submarine.
The newspaper published only a fraction of those documents, and these had been redacted, meaning that sensitive details relating to the Scorpene's design and stealth capabilities did not enter the public domain."The documents that have been posted ... have been examined and do not pose any security compromise as the vital parameters have been blacked out," the defense ministry said in a statement.The submarines, designed by French naval contractor DCNS, are being built at a state-run shipyard in Mumbai. The first is expected to enter service by the end of the year as India seeks to rebuild its dwindling fleet and assert its hegemony over the strategic waters of the Indian Ocean.The leak has raised doubts about the security of a separate DCNS submarine project in Australia where it is locked in exclusive negotiations after seeing off rivals for a A$50 billion ($38 billion) contract to build the Barracuda next generation of submarines.DCNS, which is 35 percent owned by Thales