Nishant Agrawal, an engineer from the BrahMos Aerospace
Private Limited in Nagpur was arrested in a joint operation by the Military
Intelligence and the Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra police, following a tip.
Arrested on Monday on charges of spying for Pakistan's
intelligence agency ISI and various other countries, Nishant was accused of
passing on classified and secret information to the Inter-Services Intelligence
of Pakistan in addition to other countries as well. Experts, in any state,
clarified that he worked at the integration facility and were uncertain whether
he had access to any classified information or not.
Nonetheless he will be charged under the Official Secrets
Act, following which his home and office computers have already been seized.
The police are still investigating whether he was "honey-trapped" by
Facebook IDs in the name of women, which have been traced to Pakistan.
"Very sensitive information was found on his personal
computer. We found evidence of him chatting on Facebook with Pakistan-based
IDs," said Aseem Arun, the chief of the anti-terror squad of Uttar
Pradesh.
Nishant has worked in the technical research section of the
missile centre for four years, studied at the National Institute of Technology
in Kurukshetra, and was also a gold medallist, described as a very bright
engineer.
Presently there are two other scientists working in a
Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) lab in Kanpur who are
being monitored for more suspicious activity and the situation is being
monitored as this is occurrence is the first spy scandal to hit the Brahmos
Aerospace, considered the world's fastest cruise missile.
