'ISI spy' gets transit remand

A Nagpur court on Tuesday granted three days’ transit remand to BrahMos engineer Nishant Agarwal, who was suspected to be an agent of the ISI, the Pakistani spy agency.

A junior scientist, Agarwal worked for the BrahMos Aerospace Pvt Ltd and was based in Nagpur.

He has been accused of leaking technical information about the supersonic BrahMos missile, which is a collaborative project of India and Russia.

He was arrested by a team of Anti-Terrorism Squads of Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra.

The Uttar Pradesh police told the Judicial Magistrate First Class S M Joshi that the accused was arrested under the Official Secrets Act.

They told the court that Agarwal was in touch with certain Pakistani intelligence via two fake Facebook accounts by the names of ‘Pooja Rajan’ and ‘Neha Sharma’.

These accounts, created in Islamabad, are reportedly operated by Pakistan’s ISI, and Agrawal was found chatting with them. He was caught when the Uttar Pradesh police started monitoring these accounts.