A former engineer at India's BrahMos Aerospace Pvt Ltd has been sentenced to life imprisonment for spying for Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).
Nishant Agarwal, who was arrested in 2018, was convicted under the Official Secrets Act and the IT Act for leaking sensitive technical information to Pakistani intelligence operatives. The conviction was handed down by Additional Sessions Court Judge MV Deshpande in Nagpur.
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Agrawal was employed in the technical research section of the BrahMos facility in Nagpur, where he had access to sensitive information about India's missile programs. He was accused of using this access to leak technical details about the BrahMos missile system to Pakistani intelligence operatives through fake Facebook accounts.
He was arrested in a joint operation by the military intelligence and Anti-terrorism squads (ATS) of Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra in 2018.
According to investigators, Agrawal was in touch with suspected Pakistani intelligence operatives through two Facebook accounts - "Neha Sharma" and "Pooja Ranjan" - which were believed to be run by Pakistan's ISI. These accounts were based out of Islamabad, and Agrawal is believed to have shared sensitive information about the BrahMos missile system with them.
Agrawal's involvement in the spy ring came as a shock to his colleagues, as he was considered a bright and talented engineer, media reports say. He had won the Young Scientists award from the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and had studied at the National Institute of Technology, Kurukshetra.
BrahMos Aerospace is a a joint venture between India’s Defence Research & Development Organisation (DRDO) and Russia’s Military Industrial Consortium, NPO Mashinostroyenia. It is responsible for designing, developing, and marketing supersonic cruise missile BrahMos.
