New Delhi: Indian Navy’s Upper Division Clerk (UDC), Vishal Yadav, who was arrested in the national capital, New Delhi, for allegedly leaking sensitive information about a military operation to a Pakistani handler, was sent to four days of police custody by a Jaipur court on Thursday.
A resident of Punsika village, Rewari district in Haryana, Yadav was picked up by the Rajasthan Police’s Intelligence Wing from Nausena Bhawan in Delhi on Wednesday and taken to Jaipur, where he was interrogated overnight. He was produced before the Chief Magistrate’s court in Jaipur around noon on Thursday, after which the court allowed four days of police remand, till June 30, at 11 AM, at the request of the investigating agencies to carry out further interrogation over the espionage act from multiple angles.
Special Public Prosecutor Sudesh Kumar Satwan informed us that intelligence agencies had been monitoring Yadav since 2022 for suspected espionage activities, but they were still focusing on concrete evidence against him until a few days ago. “The suspect was already on the radar since a 2022 case; now we have hard evidence on him,” Satwan said to ANI. The accused has been sharing sensitive information about naval operations and the country’s national security with his Pakistani contacts, who apparently contacted him via his ISIS Facebook ID as a woman named “Priya Sharma.”. “Priya Sharma” is saved in the contact list of the arrested Indian Navy employee, but investigators suspect that it is a fake name.
His modus operandi and his activities in question were closely looked at during Operation Sindoor, a four-day-long military operation by the Indian Armed Forces on May 7 to 10 against terror launch pads in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) as retaliation to the April 22 Pahalgam attack in which 26 civilians were killed, according to a report by ANI. The forensic report of the phone records of the Indian Navy employee showed multiple chats and transactions which include the transfer of sensitive information about the said operation with “Priya Sharma”, for which he was paid in the cryptocurrency USDT and bank transfer. The amount he received, as per the initial reports, is around ₹2 lakh, out of which ₹50,000 is the payment for his leaks on Sindoor.
Investigators also want to find out about the ways he developed contacts with the handler, when he started espionage, for how long, and if someone else was involved in the entire game. Investigators suspect that his serious addiction to online gaming and heavy debt to moneylenders compelled him to take a call. He was initially paid ₹5,000-₹6,000 and was later lured with a honey trap for high-end leaks, and the amount also increased with time. Investigators suspect that the accused handler initially contacted Yadav via Facebook, subsequently reaching out through WhatsApp and Telegram.
The Indian Navy clerk came before the Chief Judicial Magistrate’s court on Thursday via video link, covering his face with a scarf while not uttering a single word when asked by the judge if he has anything to say about the charges. Yadav is being questioned by multiple agencies in the case, including the CID and central intelligence agencies, at the Central Interrogation Centre (CIC) in Jaipur to find out the extent of the breach of information and whether the suspect was working in tandem with others.
His arrest, the first in the national capital after a nationwide swoop on the Pakistani spy network in the last few days post-Pahalgam terror attack, was made on Wednesday in Delhi along with the recovery of a mobile phone and a pen drive from him by the Rajasthan Police. Police sources in Rajasthan and Haryana said that a similar arrest was made in both Rajasthan and Haryana, as the suspect’s “larger network” was being probed after his arrest in Delhi.
IG (crime) Vishnukant Gupta said that “Pakistan’s ways have become more crafty” and that the public should “monitor their social media interactions”. Currently, the increasing threats of espionage have also led to digital intrusions in India’s defence establishments, which have become more vulnerable since Yadav’s arrest on espionage charges.