A court in Nagpur on Monday sentenced a former BrahMos Aerospace engineer to life imprisonment, holding him guilty of spying for Pakistan, according to PTI.
The man, Nishant Agarwal, was convicted for spying for the Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, Pakistan’s intelligence agency. The Nagpur district court also sentenced him to rigorous imprisonment for 14 years under the Official Secrets Act and ordered him to pay a fine of Rs 3,000.
Agarwal worked as a systems engineer in the technical research wing of BrahMos Aerospace, a joint venture between India’s Defence Research and Development Organisation and Russia’s Military Industrial Consortium. He was arrested in 2018 on charges of having leaked sensitive information to the Pakistani intelligence agency.
Agarwal was said to have been in contact with individuals believed to be Pakistani intelligence agents through two Facebook accounts in the names of Neha Sharma and Pooja Ranjan, according to the Hindustan Times.
Additional Sessions Court Judge MV Deshpande on Monday convicted the former BrahMos engineer under 66F of the Information Technology Act, which deals with cyber terrorism, and under the Official Secrets Act.
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