In a significant development, the Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) of the Maharashtra Police arrested an employee of Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL) at Ozar near Nashik for allegedly passing on “secret” information about Indian Air Force's (IAF) fighter aircrafts to the Pakistani spy agency Inter Services Intelligence (ISI).
Identifying the arrested HAL official as one Deepak Shirsat (41), the ATS officials said here on Friday that Shirsat worked at the HAL’s Ozar facility that houses the Aircraft Manufacturing Division of the state-owned aerospace and defence company.
Shirsat was on Friday produced before a competent court which has remanded in police custody for 10 days.
Acting on a reliable piece of intelligence, the the Nashik Police, ATS, and Military Intelligence had put the suspected HAL employee close watch for the past several days. He was finally taken into custody by the ATS three days ago.
Shirsat has been booked for an offence under sections 3, 4 and 5 of the Official Secrets Act, 1923. “Three mobile handsets with five SIM cards and two memory cards have been seized from the accused and the same are being sent to the Forensic Science Laboratory for examination,” a senior ATS official said.
As per his social media profile, Shirsat is a married man hailing from Jalgaon in north Maharashtra. An alumnus of Government Polytechnic Pune, and Gangapur Madhyamik Vidyalaya, he was working with HAL as a QC Inspector.
Informed ATS sources said that the sustained interrogation of the arrested accused had revealed that he was “in constant touch” of the ISI and “was supplying the secret information about Indian fighter aircrafts and their sensitive details, along with the information related to Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. (HAL), the aircraft manufacturing Unit at Ozar, Nashik, the airbase and the prohibited areas inside the manufacturing Unit to the ISI”.
The secret operation was carried out and accomplished under the overall supervision of Maharashtra’s Additional Director General of Police and ATS Chief Deven Bharti.
Investigations have revealed the arrested accused was allegedly passing on documents, photographs, maps with the longitude-latitude markings of the defence-related facilities here, via WhatsApp and other modes of communication.
While Deven Bharti headed the operation, the prominent senior police officials participated in the operation wereDIG Shri Jayant Naiknavre, SP Shri. Ravindrasingh Pardeshi and DCP Dr. Vinaykumar Rathod by ACP Sunil Yadav, PI Mahadev Waghmode, APIs Sandip Ghuge, Pratima Joglekar, Ekshinge and PSI Sanap.
Meanwhile, HAL spokesperson Gopal Sutar declined comment, saying: “As the investigation is on we have no comments to offer.”
Located 200 kms away from Mumbai, the HAL Aircraft Manufacturing Division at Ozar in Nashik district manufactures MiG variants MiG-21 M, MiG21 BIS, MiG 27 M and Su-30 MKI for the Indian Air Force.
The HAL Ozar 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.