Army jawan arrested on spying charges from Meerut Cantonment

The arrested jawan is associated with the Army's Signal Regiment.

Pic for representational purpose only

MEERUT: An Army jawan has been arrested for spying and allegedly leaking vital military secrets from Meerut Cantonment on Wednesday.

The jawan, whose identity has not been revealed, is associated with the Army's Signal Regiment.

A soldier of Indian Army's Signal Regiment has been arrested in Meerut cantonment on the charges of espionage, interrogation is underway. pic.twitter.com/pZGsbcgzsw

— ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) October 17, 2018

He is currently being interrogated for more information. 

The authorities are also trying to ascertain if more people are involved in this espionage racket. 

The jawan was on the radar of the Military Intelligence for some time. He has been arrested as part of the ongoing probe into the BrahMos missile leak case which was unearthed recently.   

The arrest of the jawan in Meerut comes days after Nishant Agarwal, a BrahMos Aerospace engineer, was arrested on charges of spying. 

Agarwal was arrested earlier this month in a joint operation by the anti-terrorist squad (ATS) units of Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh, following which the UP ATS was granted his transit remand.

Nishant Agarwal was taken from Nagpur to Lucknow, where he was interrogated.

He was in touch with suspected Pakistani intelligence operatives through two Facebook accounts with names – Neha Sharma and Pooja Ranjan.

Agrawal was arrested from BrahMos' Wardha Road facility for allegedly leaking "technical information" to Pakistan.

BrahMos Aerospace is a joint venture between India's Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and the 'Military Industrial Consortium' (NPO Mashinostroyenia) of Russia.

Agrawal, despite being engaged in "highly sensitive work", was "casual" on the internet and made himself an "easy target", the UP-ATS officer said.

He said Agrawal was active on LinkedIn also.

The engineer has been charged under sections 3,4, 5 and 9 of the Official Secrets Act, sections 419,420, 467, 468, 120 (B) and 121 (A) of the Indian Penal Code as well as 66 (B) of the Information Technology Act.