New Delhi: The National Investigation Agency (NIA) this week raided 16 locations in seven states as part of its probe into an alleged espionage racket run by operatives linked to Pakistan’s intelligence agency ISI.
The raids took place in Gujarat, Karnataka, Kerala, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Haryana Thursday, in premises linked to accused suspected to have received funding from the ISI and its operatives in exchange for sensitive and confidential information related to the Indian Navy.
The high-profile espionage case stemmed from a case lodged by the Counter Intelligence Cell of the Andhra Pradesh Police, which on 12 January 2021 booked one Deepak from Haryana and several unidentified persons who allegedly transferred money to individuals in the port city of Visakhapatnam in exchange of confidential information.
The NIA so far has arrested three suspects in the case and filed three chargesheets naming them and two alleged ISI-linked operatives who collected classified information about the Indian Navy.
Among those arrested so far in the case, one Akash Solanki from Uttar Pradesh’s Firozabad was working at the naval dockyard in Visakhapatnam. Two others — Manmohan Surendra Panda and Aman Sheikh — allegedly facilitated the honey trapping of officials working at the dockyard to elicit information through escorts planted by the ISI, according to the NIA.
The case was the second in two years for the Counter Intelligence Cell of the Andhra Pradesh Police as it had already busted an espionage racket in December 2019, leading to arrests of eight Navy sailors who were allegedly honey trapped and shared classified information with ISI-linked operatives.
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What’s the case
The 2021 case was registered on the suspicion that between 2020 and 2021, some unidentified individuals based in Visakhapatnam hatched a conspiracy to carry out anti-national activities in exchange for money.
“Money was found transferred to some accounts in the name of certain unknown persons at Visakhapatnam and other places through legal/illegal channels for the purpose of carrying out certain illegal espionage activities such as collection of communication or secret information pertaining to sensitive and vital installations, defence establishments etc. in Visakhapatnam and also across the country,” the CI cell of Andhra Pradesh Police noted in the FIR.
The case was registered under IPC sections 120-B (criminal conspiracy), 121 (A) (conspiring to commit certain offences against the state), and sections 17 and 18 of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act that deal with punishment for raising funds for terrorist acts and conspiracy respectively. Additionally, the investigators also invoked section 3 of the Official Secrets Act that defines punishment for spying.
By June 2023, the Andhra Police had suspected involvement of foreign intelligence operatives in the alleged espionage and the case was handed over to the NIA by the Ministry of Home Affairs.
Having lodged a case on 5 June that year based on investigation conducted until then, the NIA first arrested 21-year old Solanki, who was working as an Electrical Artificer Radio Apprentice (EAC) at the naval dockyard in Visakhapatnam.
In the chargesheet filed before the special NIA court in Vijayawada in July last year, the NIA alleged that Solanki had confidential details of warships and submarines of the Indian Navy which he was passing on to a Pakistani intelligence operative, who was working under the pseudonym ‘Aditi Chouhan’.
The counterterrorism agency had further alleged that a Pakistani operative named Meer Balaj Khan, who was charged alongside Solanki, was funding him through crypto currencies. The NIA had said that it had obtained Khan’s credentials from leading crypto exchange Binance, which had confirmed his Pakistani identity.
Over the course of investigation, the NIA nabbed two more accused — Surendra Panda and Amaan Sheikh from Mumbai.
In its first supplementary chargesheet filed in November last year, the NIA alleged that Panda also was sharing classified information about the Indian Navy with intelligence operatives, and Balaj Khan and one Alven (another ISI-linked operative who allegedly funded Panda) were funding him through crypto channels.
Nearly a couple of weeks after filing the first supplementary chargesheet, the agency nabbed Sheikh from Mumbai on 20 November last year.
Agency officials claimed that he played a key role in the espionage racket by activating SIM cards that were eventually used by Pakistan’s operatives and while he was working in close coordination with an agent named Usman, he was being funded by the same set of operatives who were funding Solanki and Panda.
(Edited by Gitanjali Das)
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