Abdul Wahab would call up a person with diplomatic immunity, get Pak visa for anyone while sitting in the comfort of his home; crime branch questioning 10-12 persons whom he assisted

The Ahmedabad crime branch has nabbed a 72-year-old resident of Dariapur, Abdul Wahab Pathan of Dariapur, originally from Chitral on Pakistan- Afghan border in Swat region, from the city. He allegedly helped Pakistan’s ISI acquire details of retired defence personnel. The information was being acquired by cloning website rodra.gov.in with a fake name, RODRA.in, which lured retired and about-to-retire Indian defence personnel to put their personal and official details.

The activity led to the ISI to get contact details of the defence personnel and their superiors and the units they used to work in.

Deputy Commissioner of Police (Crime Branch) Chaitanya Mandlik said that information was sought from social media accounts of such defence personnel, and their special module attempted to honey trap them and extract secret defence details from them.

“We have found that for the last five years, Wahab, who has strong feelings for his homeland Chitral in Swat, had sent about 10 to 12 residents of Ahmedabad to Pakistan through his contact who has diplomatic immunity. We are gathering evidence to send the person with diplomatic immunity back to Pakistan to restrict further damage,” said a top crime branch official.

Mandlik said that while they were working on the “honey trap” module of the Pakistani spy agency, they got an input from the military intelligence unit of Southern Command about Abdul Wahab.

“We lost no time in picking him up. On interrogating him, it came to light that he used to work as a manager in a reputed electronic and home appliances showroom at Ashram Road. He had attempted to get a visa to Pakistan to meet his brothers. There he got in touch with the person with diplomatic immunity. The person put him in touch with a Pakistani Intelligence officer (PIO) Shafakat Jatoi, a Punjabi based in Pakistan,” the official said.

Later, the PIO put a proposal that if he acquired activated Sim cards for the person having diplomatic immunity, he would get him the visa. “Wahab did that. The PIO in Pakistan installed WhatsApp in his mobile in Pakistan and put the OTP given to him by his counterpart in India. This would activate it. The information given by Wahab is being investigated, as well as tracking others who were sent by Wahab to Pakistan,” the official said.

DCP Mandlik said that Wahab later became so acquainted with PIO Jatoi that he used to call up the person he knew and get a visa approved for anyone. “He used to get Rs 8,000 to Rs 10,000 per Sim card. We have identified the dealer who provided activated Sim cards to Wahab, but he seems to unware of the purpose. We are questioning others who went to Pakistan to figure out the reasons. We are also tracking whether some retired or about to retire defence personnel were actually honey trapped by Pakistani Intelligence,” the DCP said.

Crime branch sources said some Pakistani spies come into contact with defence officials and casually talk to them about their movement with troops from one place to another. “This could result in another Pulwama type attack. This is our major concern. We are working with Gujarat ATS and intelligence agencies to figure out if such information about any movement in India is being shared,” said Mandlik.