Two Indian Army Personnel Arrested for 'Leaking' Hundreds of Classified Documents to Pakistan
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14:46 GMT 06.07.2021Get short URL
by
Rishikesh Kumar
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The Indian Army asked its personnel to delete around 50 mobile applications from their phones last year to avert spying attempts by adversaries. There have been incidents where soldiers have been honey-trapped by foreign intelligence agencies and coaxed into divulging information.
India’s Punjab police claim to have busted a major cross-border espionage network as it arrested two Army personnel on charges of allegedly spying and providing classified documents to Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). The police on Tuesday said that the accused - Sepoy Harpreet Singh (19 Rashtriya Rifles) and Sepoy Gurbhej Singh (18 SikhLi) - shared photographs of at least
900 classified documents with Pakistani agents.
© AFP 2021 / INDRANIL MUKHERJEE
Honey-Trapped Indian Air Force Officer Held for Passing on Info to Foreign Spy
Punjab Police Chief Dinkar Gupta claimed that state law enforcement, while carrying out an investigation related to an illicit drug case, recovered “confidential and secret documents related to the functioning and deployment of the Indian Army” from cross-border drug smuggler Ranvir Singh, who was arrested with 70g heroin on 24 May 2021.
“Ranvir motivated and lured Sepoy Harpreet Singh with financial benefits for sharing defence related classified documents, following which the latter induced his friend Sepoy Gurbhej into such anti-national spying activities”, said Dinkar Gupta.
These classified documents containing both strategic and tactical information relating to the Indian Army were accessed by Gurbhej Singh while he was posted at the Infantry Brigade Headquarters in Kargil.
Police said that these documents were shared with Pakistan’s federal intelligence agency the ISI over a period of four months between February and May 2021.
In 2019,
dozens of Army and Air Force personnel were arrested after military intelligence caught them sharing confidential information with Pakistani handlers. Amid the exponential rise in spy cases against the Armed Forces, the government set up a cyber monitoring cell in the Army to monitor the use of social media by its personnel, especially on non-encrypted sites.