A fellow prosecutor Tsunehiko Maeda allegedly confided in regarding data tampering linked to a postal abuse probe kept the information to himself for six months, a prosecution source said Monday.
Maeda allegedly told the 35-year-old unnamed prosecutor at the Osaka District Public Prosecutor's Office in July last year that he falsified data on a floppy disk seized as evidence in the case. The unnamed prosecutor, however, didn't report the transgression to his superiors until Jan. 30, the source said.
Maeda, a member of the Osaka district office's Special Investigation Department, was arrested Sept. 21 on suspicion of altering the data to build his case against a former health ministry bureaucrat who has since been acquitted. The original data would have supported the woman's innocence.
The Supreme Public Prosecutors Office, which is investigating Maeda, is questioning his 35-year-old colleague about the six-month silence, the source said.