The four arrested contractual employees at the Defence Research and Development Organisation’s (DRDO) Integrated Test Range (ITR), Chandipur in Baleswar district, who were leaking secret information to the Pakistani agents, were forwarded to the Baleswar SDJM Court here on Wednesday.
It has been revealed that all the accused were honey-trapped. The fourth accused, identified as Hemanta Mistry, who was working as DG operator in DRDO, had link with a woman. The woman reportedly lured the quartet to leak secret information of DRDO to Pakistani agents through Facebook messenger. The intelligence reports stated the accused received international calls mostly from Pakistan-Rajasthan border areas and passed secret information to foreign agents. Others, who were arrested for the espionage charges, have been identified as Basanta Behera, Tulu Behera and Sheikh Musaq.
Based on input received from reliable sources, four persons were apprehended in Chandipur police station under Case No.76, Dt.14.09.21, U/S- 120-B/121-A/34 IPC-R/W- Sec-3, 4&5 of Official Secret Act by the Baleswar i police. According to police sources, the accused have been arrested for committing offence of causing serious harm to the security, sovereignty and integrity of our nation and further interrogation of the four accused and some others are going on to unearth more evidence in the case. According to sources, all the four accused were working at the launch pad-3 of ITR in Chandipur.
“All the service providers in DRDO are working in outsourcing. Mostly local people are appointed as contractual workers by contractors. The authorities of DRDO have no information about their character and activities. They have also no scrutiny and control over them leading to the tragic situations,” said a former police official.
Meanwhile, on the instructions of DGP Abhay, the Crime Branch on the day took over the probe from the Baleswar police. “As per the order of DGP, Crime Branch will take over investigation of Chandipur PS case. A four member investigating team led by Additional SP Prasant Ku. Bisoyi is heading to Baleswar to to take charge of investigation,” said a tweet by Crime Branch.
This is not the first instance of arrest of any employee of DRDO Chandipur on charges of espionage. Notably, on February 11, 2021, Ishwar Chandra Behera, a cameraman at Integrated Test Range (ITR) in Chandipur was sentenced to life imprisonment for spying for Pakistani intelligence agency ISI. He was arrested in February 2015 on charges of sharing secret data to Pakistan.