The MHA official had also carried with him two files during the recent CIC hearing but Singh’s representative maintained that he had already gone through them, which did not contain information on the substantive issues.

Irked by this, Chief Information Commissioner Wajahat Habibullah said, “It is distressing to note that documents of such important nature in the evolution of free India’s history that will be vital for any documentation of the history of the late 20th century are not traceable either in the MHA or in the premier repository of our country’s remembrance, the NAI.”

Pulling up both the public authorities, Habibullah further said it was all the “more alarming that there is no record of movement of these documents which could enable tracing of these and conservation”.

The Commission has now directed the MHA to look into every nook and corner of its offices and storerooms to trace the documents and the movement of the files, if any, so that they could be retrieved.

Officials responsible from both the departments have been summoned on June 28 “to compare notes and devise ways of ensuring recovery of the files in question and their proper conservation, and indeed inspection by the complainant”.