Espionage ring accused Shoaib was arrested Friday after he was brought to New Delhi from Jodhpur, with the police claiming he was in touch with expelled Pakistan high commission staffer Mehmood Akhtar for the past three to four years and had visited Pakistan six times. Sources said the module that Akhtar ran was planning to carry out a strike similar to the 2008 Mumbai attack somewhere on India’s west coast.
“There have been intelligence inputs that Pakistan’s ISI was planning to send terrorists through the sea route to carry out a Mumbai-type terror attack in India. Akhtar’s activities and his interest in gathering information about the west coast buttress the intelligence inputs,” an official said. Akhtar was trying to get information on deployment of security forces along the west coast, Sir Creek and Kutch areas, and about military installations in Gujarat, Maharashtra and Goa, a home ministry official said.
Investigators said they would try to recover data from a “phablet” seized from his possession, which he had tried to damage when the police in Jodhpur detained him on Thursday evening, and to question him along with the two other alleged spies arrested in the case, Subhash Jangir and Maulana Ramzan.
It is alleged that Shoaib, a passport and visa agent, was responsible for recruiting Subhash and Maulana in the spy module. “Shoaib visited
Pakistan, where his maternal grandparents live, at least six times,” said Ravindra Yadav, joint commissioner of police (crime). He was in touch with Mehmood Akhtar at the Pakistan high commission for the past three to four years, he said. Mr Yadav said that some documents and a “phablet” had been recovered from Shoaib.
“There were some classified documents recovered from him. A phablet was also found with him. He had tried to damage the phablet so that the data couldn’t be recovered but we will try to recover the information,” the police officer added.
While Subhash and Maulana told the police that Shoaib was also present at Delhi Zoo when they were handing over the documents to Akhtar, Shoaib told the police he was at a hotel. “He had stayed in the hotel while the other two went to the zoo to hand over the documents. When he saw the mobile phones of the other two were switched off, he sensed something wrong,” Mr Yadav said.
The officer also said Shoaib will be questioned along with Subhash and Maulana to clear the contradictions in their versions.
Shoaib’s family has a clothes shop in Jodhpur. He was involved in his family business and was also working as a passport and visa agent. He was detained near Jodhpur on Thursday evening after the Delhi police alerted the local police.
While Akhtar, who enjoys diplomatic immunity, has been declared persona non grata and told to leave India by Saturday, Subhash and Maulana were arrested on charges of sharing sensitive information and defence documents, including deployment details of the BSF along the India-Pakistan border. They were sent to 12-day police custody.
Shoaib had come in contact with Maulana around a year and a half back and had lured him into collecting vital information on Army and paramilitary installations in Gujarat and Rajasthan, an official said.
Shoaib was produced in a city court on Friday and was also remanded to 12-day police custody.
A Delhi police official said Akhtar, before being released due to his diplomatic immunity, had confessed about his role in the spy ring. The Delhi police has also done a video-recording of his statement. In his statement, Akhtar admitted he was part of the spy ring for over a year.
Akhtar named a few officers at the high commission to whom he was reporting, with all the data he collected, but the police is yet to take any action as there is no direct evidence against them as of now.
