NEW DELHI, June 3: An engineer connected with manufacturing India’s defence equipment has been found guilty of spying for Pakistan’s intelligence agency Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).
The Nagpur district court on Monday sentenced Nishant Agarwal, a former engineer at the BrahMos Aerospace Private Limited to life imprisonment and a fine of Rs 3,000 for spying for ISI.
Additional sessions judge MV Deshpande stated in the order that Agarwal was convicted under section 235 of the Criminal Procedure Code for an offence punishable under section 66 (f) of the IT Act and various sections of the Official Secrets Act (OSA). “The court sentenced Agarwal to life imprisonment and RI for 14 years under the Official Secrets Act and fined him ₹ 3,000,” said Special Public Prosecutor Jyoti Vajani.
Agarwal, employed in the technical research section of the company’s missile centre in Nagpur, was arrested in a joint operation by the military intelligence and Anti-terrorism squads (ATS) of Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra in 2018. The former BrahMos Aerospace engineer was booked under various provisions of the Indian Penal Code and the stringent OSA.
He had worked at the BrahMos facility for four years and was accused of leaking sensitive technical information to ISI. BrahMos Aerospace is a joint venture between the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and the Military Industrial Consortium (NPO Mashinostroyenia) of Russia.
Agarwal was granted bail by the Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court last April.
(Manas Dasgupta)
