An employee at Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) has been arrested from a research wing that provides sensitive information on the BrahMos missile unit in Maharashtra’s for allegedly seeping out technical secrets to Pakistan.
The suspected Pakistani agent, who has been identified as Nishant Agrawal, is an engineer and is said to be working at Brahmos Aerospace unit from past four years.
Agarwal was nabbed in a joint operation conducted by Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squads (ATS) at DRDO’s Wardha Road facility in Nagpur and has been booked under the Official Secrets Act.
The matter is further investigated by the police.
The alleged spy is supposed to have the affiliation to the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), premier intelligence agency of Pakistan.
According to his landlord Manohar Kale, the engineer was residing in a rented accommodation on Wardha Road since last one year.
Aseem Arun, ATS IG, said, “Extremely sensitive information was found on his personal computer. We also found evidence of him chatting on Facebook with Pakistan-based operators.”
DRDO facility from where Nishant Agarwal was taken into custody, manufactures propellents for the BrahMos missile.
The BrahMos, the fastest cruise missile in the world, is a medium-range supersonic missile that can be fired from submarines, ships, aircraft or land.
According to sources, there is speculation that one more agency could be involved in this espionage and few other scientists might also come under the scanner.
UP ATS is interrogating the speculations of possible nexus in leaking out the sensitive information to ISI.
