Ex-BrahMos Aerospace engineer Nishant Agarwal gets lifer for spying for Pakistan’s ISI

The Nagpur district court docket on Monday sentenced former BrahMos Aerospace Pvt Ltd engineer Nishant Agarwal to life imprisonment underneath the Official Secrets Act for espionage actions on behalf of Pakistan’s intelligence company, ISI, media reported.

Agarwal was additionally sentenced to 14 years of rigorous imprisonment (RI) and fined INR 3,000, in response to studies.

Additional classes court docket decide MV Deshpande, within the order, acknowledged that Agarwal was convicted underneath part 235 of the Criminal Procedure Code for offenses punishable underneath part 66 (f) of the IT Act and numerous sections of the Official Secrets Act (OSA).

The 2018 case evoked shock and dismay because it was the primary spy scandal to affect BrahMos Aerospace, involving a younger gifted engineer.

Agarwal allegedly was in steady contact with two Facebook accounts, specifically Neha Sharma and Pooja Ranjan, which had been dealt with by Pakistani intelligence operatives from Islamabad.

“The court docket sentenced Agarwal to life imprisonment and RI for 14 years underneath the Official Secrets Act and fined him Rs 3,000,” mentioned Special Public Prosecutor Jyoti Vajani, in response to studies.

Nishant Agarwal, who was employed within the technical analysis part at BrahMos Aerospace’s missile heart in Nagpur, was arrested in 2018 in a joint operation by navy intelligence and the Anti-Terrorism Squads (ATS) of Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra.

He was senior system engineer at BrahMos Aerospace, a collaboration between India’s Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and Russia’s Military Industrial Consortium (NPO Mashinostroyenia).

BrahMos Aerospace specialises within the growth of India’s supersonic cruise missile, able to deployment from numerous platforms, together with land, air, sea, and underwater.

The former engineer was charged underneath numerous provisions of the Indian Penal Code and the stringent Official Secrets Act (OSA) for allegedly leaking delicate technical info to Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).

Agarwal had labored on the BrahMos facility for 4 years earlier than his arrest.

Nishant Agarwal was a recipient of the Young Scientists award from the Defence Research and Development Organisation. He shocked his colleagues along with his involvement in such actions, an Hindustan Times report mentioned.

He was recognised as a gifted engineer and had studied on the National Institute of Technology, Kurukshetra.

The investigators probing the case mentioned that Nishant’s informal perspective, regardless of his involvement in extraordinarily delicate work, on the web made him a simple goal, reported Hindustan Times.

Last April, the Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court granted Agarwal bail.