Zeenews Bureau
New Delhi: In a shocking disclosure, it has come to light that an official of the National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO) was booted out of the agency for secretly filming women colleagues in the office toilet.
India’s premiere technical intelligence agency, the NTRO, was set up after the Kargil intrusion and has been under the scanner of the Supreme Court for a slew of alleged irregularities.
As per reports, the alleged filming of women staffers at the NTRO’s Hauz Khas office in New Delhi actually happened years ago, but it has come to fore just recently.
Some women staffers discovered a spycam fixed in the toilet used by them and later it was discovered that the feed from the camera was being accessed by a computer manned by an ex-IAF officer attached to the agency’s counter-intelligence and security unit.
According to sources, after the matter came to knowledge of top NTRO officials, an internal probe was conducted and serious disciplinary action taken against the accused persons.
However, the matter was not brought to the notice of the Prime Minister’s Office, which the NTRO reports to.
According to sources, the first inquiry was handled by a senior woman officer on the basis of which, an official inquiry was conducted under VK Mittal, the technical head of NTRO.
Incidentally, Mittal later left the NTRO alleging mismanagement and financial impropriety in the way the agency functioned.
Mittal submitted his probe report to then NTRO chairman KVSS Prasad Rao and recommended “suitable legal action” in the case. He concluded the spycams were bought with secret service funds.
Mittal concluded in his report that the hard disk of the computer where the feeds from the camera were stored was reformatted and technically destroyed.
As per reports, the ex-IAF officer who was recording the toilet video feed was on leave when a woman staffer — on deputation from the Ministry of Defence — discovered the images and alerted those who figured in them.
The man in question was himself seen adjusting the camera in the footages. Learning that the spy cams were installed in NTRO’s toilets, the officer’s house was put under surveillance and his antecedents checked and finally he was asked to leave the organisation.
Former IPS officer Anil Choudhary, who served as NTRO’s advisor during the relevant period (2007-2008) and was involved in investigating the incident, was quoted as saying, “Since there were serious moral issues involved, we took strict action against the person we thought was the culprit. We decided to handle the matter internally and not go to the police.’’
First Published: Wednesday, September 21, 2011, 10:15