Military Intelligence and Rajasthan police have caught two civil defence employees who were selling highly sensitive information about strategic Army installations to Pakistan's ISI

New Delhi: In a joint operation, Military Intelligence and Rajasthan police on Monday nabbed two civil defence employees for passing on information about strategic Army installations to Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). 

One of the Indians was honey-trapped by a Pakistani woman ISI operative on social media.

Rajasthan police, based on intelligence input provided by Lucknow based Military Intelligence (MI) arrested Vikas Kumar (29), a civil defence employee at an Army Ammunition Depot in Shri Ganganagar and Chiman Lal (22), a civil contractual employee of Army's Mahajan Field Firing Range (MFFR) in Bijaner for working as ISI spies, news agency IANS quoted official sources as saying.

Last year in August, MI Lucknow through its sleuths had learnt about the espionage agent, Vikas Kumar who was passing military information to his handlers in Pakistan.

The agency passed on the intel to Rajasthan police and the two launched the Operation Desert Chase to monitor and analyse the movement of two men. They were arrested after it was ascertained that the two men were passing highly sensitive military information to Pakistan in lieu of money.

Kumar, sources said, confessed to having passed information about Army units and their officials, strength at MFFR, ammunition at the ammunition depot, ORBAT (Order of battle; composition related details) of two local army brigades, visitors etc. on a routine basis. He also shared pictures with his Pakistani handler.

Whereas, Chiman Lal used to regularly send photos of "water- distribution-register" kept at one of the Pump House of MFFR with all their details on an almost daily basis. During the probe, it was revealed that Kumar was receiving payments in three of his own and his brother's bank accounts.

Honey Trapped By Woman ISI Agent

Kumar was honey-trapped by a Multan-based female Pakistani Intelligence Operative (PIO), on Facebook. The PIO ran a pseudonymous Facebook account, pretending to be a Hindu woman 'Anoshka Chopra' based in India.

According to the sources Kumar has confessed that he had received a friend request from the PIO's Facebook Profile, 'Anoshka Chopra' in March or April last year and had accepted.

"They became very friendly shared their WhatsApp numbers with each other and started chatting and making audio/video calls," sources said

Under an elaborate ISI espionage plan, the PIO was using an Indian WhatsApp number and claimed she was working at Canteen Store Department (CSD) headquarters in Mumbai.

Kumar, joined several WhatsApp groups as she asked him to. "She was in all these groups and there were many serving defence and civil defence employees in them, according to the sources.

"Subsequently she introduced Kumar to her 'boss', Amit Kumar Singh (pseudonym used by the handler) who was also using an Indian WhatsApp number. He at times claimed to be from CSD and at times form Military Engineer Service (MES). Once Kumar and the Pakistani handler, 'Amit Kumar Singh' started communicating, 'Anoshka Chopra' deactivated her Facebook account and WhatsApp number," sources said. The handler had convinced Kumar to acquire and send him military information in exchange for money, sources said.