The Central Bureau of Investigation on Friday raided 19 places in four cities in connection with the navy war room leak case.

The raids were conducted on retired and serving defence officials, businessman Abhishek Verma and a chartered account.

Among those raided in Delhi, Kolkata, Visakhapatnam [Images] and Bhubaneswar, included Commodore A K Patnaik, officer-in-charge of INS Netaji Subash, Kolkata, a retired naval official S S Rathore, two serving army officials -- Lt Col S S Chaudhury and Major Dev Sharma.

The other naval officials whose residences were searched by the CBI, included Commanders S M Hanchinal, A K Pandey and S S Dhiman and the official and residential premises of chartered accountant Sushil Bagaria, the CBI said.

Residences of three under secretaries of Ministry of Defence -- Prem Shanker, R S Dudani and H L Bhatia -- were also searched by the CBI on Friday.

The ongoing investigations by the CBI revealed that apart from the leak of information from the naval war room and Air Defence Directorate, there was prima facie a larger ring of "compromised officials" in various wings of the armed forces and the defence ministry, who were giving sensitive information to the accused in exchange of gratification.

The CBI's statement is seen as exposing chinks in the counter-surveilllance mechanism of the defence establishment as officials from the three services appeared to have walked home with secret and classified information.

CBI claimed to have recovered a "500-page" classified information bunch from the residence of retired commander of Indian Navy S S Rathore, whose residence had also been raided by the agency on Friday.

Speaking to rediff.com, CBI spokesman G Mohanty said the raids were related to cases registered in May against a few senior officials.

The CBI had registered a case on March 20 and had conducted nationwide raids on April 6 besides arresting Kulbhushan Parasar, a former navy commander.

Ravi Shankaran, a former navy officer and a kin of Naval Chief Admiral Arun Prakash, has already been declared a proclaimed offender in this case.

He is alleged to be one of the main accused in this case and is at present believed to be in London [Images].

With PTI inputs