HAL employee held for sharing sensitive information to Pakistan's intelligence agency

In a top-secret operation, the Anti-Terrorism Squad of Maharashtra police arrested a person in Nashik for passing information about fighter aircraft to Pakistani spy agency Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), a Pakistani intelligence agency.

The accused is an employee of the Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL) in Nashik district.

"Sustained interrogation has revealed that the accused was passing on sensitive information about aircraft and its confidential details," ATS officials said.

The man works with the aircraft manufacturing division at Ozar.

An offence under sections 3, 4 and 5 of the Official Secrets Act, 1923 has been registered against the accused and three mobile handsets with five SIM cards and two memory cards have been seized from his possession.

The same is being sent to the Forensic Science Laboratory for examination. He has been remanded to police custody for ten days.

Meanwhile, a HAL spokesperson said: "As the investigation is on we have no comments to offer."

The HAL Aircraft Manufacturing Division is nearly 200 km away from Mumbai. It manufactures MiG variants MiG-21 M, MiG21 BIS, MiG 27 M and Su-30 MKI. Its facility is the mainstay for Russian-origin aircraft in terms of life extension, modifications, site repairs and investigations. It also exports MiG spares to Egypt, Syria, Vietnam, Malaysia, Algeria, Poland and Russia.