BrahMos engineer held for espionage

Mumbai: A system engineer attached with the Indo-Russian supersonic cruise missile venture BrahMos Aerospace was arrested from Nagpur following an input from Military Intelligence wing on alleged leaking of state secrets to Pakistan and United States. The accused scientist, identified as Nishant Aggarwal, was arrested in the early hours of Monday by a team of Uttar Pradesh (UP) anti-terrorism squad (ATS) with the help of local police.

The officials nabbed Aggarwal from his residence at Ujjwal Nagar in Nagpur and also detained two women from Kanpur and Agra each in the incident. Aggarwal was associated with the BrahMos Aerospace for the past four years and was working at its Sonepur facility near Nagpur, officials said.

The UP ATS had arrested a BSF jawan in a honey trap case in September from Noida for sharing details of his unit with Pakistan’s notorious Inter State Intelligence. During investigation, the ATS found six identities of women who lured the jawan into leaking the sensitive details. In subsequent investigation, the ATS officials found that Aggarwal was also in contact with some chat Ids of these women. The ATS got a search warrant against Aggarwal and raided his residence on Monday.

Aggarwal is suspected to have befriended some persons, suspected to be Pakistani women, via Facebook messenger and passed on sensitive details to them. The said chats came on the radar of Delhi-based Military Intelligence (MI).

“We have found several very sensitive and classified information from his personal laptop, which is in violation of certain rules. Several hard disks and documents have been seized from his residence, which have sensitive details pertaining to the project, most of which he was not entitled to have access to. There is no clarity on what was allegedly shared,” said an officer.

The team also raided his Roorkee residence and seized another laptop of Aggarwal, which is stated to be old one. The officials have also found laptops from the two women and data is not being checked.

The MI along with ATS, Uttar Pradesh will scan through his chat history to ascertain what was shared with the Inter State Intelligence (ISI) and US. The identities of those who were in contact with Aggarwal is also being established. The investigators will also probe into his recent visits and phone calls and data.

The UP ATS will produce Aggarwal in court at Nagpur on Tuesday and will take him to UP for further investigation.

Aggarwal has been booked under the stringent Official Secrets Act and officials said more raids would be conducted on Tuesday.