Bhopal: The Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) of the Madhya Pradesh Police on Thursday arrested 11 members of an espionage ring backed by Pakistan’s spy agency Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) from different parts of the state.


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Those arrested were allegedly running call centres using Chinese equipment and SIM cards that helped ISI to spy on India’s military operations.


As per officials, they were allegedly operating parallel telephone exchanges using Chinese equipment and SIM-boxes.


The MPATS officials have confiscated several Chinese equipment, SIM-boxes, prepaid SIM cards, mobile phones, laptops and data cards.


All the 11 men have been booked under provisions of the Indian Telegraph Act, besides Section 122 and 123 of Indian Penal Code (IPC).


ATS chief Sanjeev Shami, who led the operation, told reporters that three people were arrested from Bhopal, one from Satna, two from Jabalpur, and five from Gwalior.


Shami said that Balram, the man who was arrested from Satna, is allegedly the mastermind of the racket.


“We arrested a Satna-based man identified as Balram, the kingpin of the espionage ring, following tip-offs by two ISI agents, Satwinder and Dadu,” he said.


“The two ISI agents were arrested from RS Pura in Jammu in November last year on charges of sending strategic information to their handlers in Pakistan. Balram led us to 10 other people involved in the racket,” Shami said.


He said Balram and his associates were operating a number of parallel telephone exchanges across as well as outside the state.


“ISI used to deposit money in multiple accounts opened by Balram through hawala. Balram then used to disburse the funds to other members of the espionage ring,” Shami said.


“The ISI men from Pakistan used the facilities to call military personnel in Jammu and Kashmir by posing as senior Army officers and take details of strategic operations,” the ATS chief said.


Shami added that the role of employees of some telecom firms will also be probed and “more arrests will be made in the coming days”.


The ATS chief said the arrested men also caused a huge revenue loss to the central government and department of telecommunications via illegal conversion of international calls into local calls.


The ATS was helped by the Telecom Enforcement Resource and Monitoring Cell, the technical arm of the Union Telecom Ministry.