DRDO espionage case: Mysterious woman operated from Pakistan

The Odisha Police which is probing the DRDO espionage case in ITR, Chandipur, Wednesday said that it has a Pakistan link.

The Crime Branch sleuths came have come to the conclusion that the “mysterious” woman handler, who gathered defence-related information from five DRDO employees, used four Facebook accounts which were operated from Pakistan, Additional Director General of Police, Crime Branch, Sanjeev Panda said.

“The Facebook accounts were operated from Pakistan - three from Islamabad and one from Rawalpindi. The woman used proxy IPs (Internet Protocol) of the US, India and Germany to keep her location a secret. Few of the accounts are currently active and she is still chatting with some people,” he told reporters in Cuttack on Wednesday.

Though the ADG refused to divulge further details, he said the woman was using the five accused employees of the Integrated Test Range (ITR) at Chandipur to get "valuable information" on missiles test fired from there and other airborne equipment testing activities in Odisha.

He said the mysterious woman had talked to the five arrested persons from different Facebook accounts by changing her voice through a mobile application.

She had even asked the accused to change their SIM cards and hacked their phones to keep tab on their movements in the ITR. Meanwhile, the crime branch has completed the first phase of interrogation of the accused and are verifying information collected from them.

“If required, the CB will seek their remand further,” Panda said.

The five accused have already been interrogated by NIA sleuths and a team from Airforce Intelligence, Kolkata.

A special squad of Balasore district police had arrested the five employees, four of them working under contractual basis, from Chandipur on charges of espionage on September 14 and 16. Four of the accused worked at launch pad-3 of the ITR.

It was also alleged that the accused persons were honey trapped as they admitted that the mysterious woman had assured one of them that she would marry him.

This apart, one of the accused had received Rs 38,000 in two instalments from a Dubai-based bank account.

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