A person has been detained in Jammu’s Samba for allegedly passing vital information to Pakistan, sources said on Thursday. Pankaj Sharma was working as an operative of Pakistani intelligence agencies, they further added and was in touch with his handlers for the past few years.
Sharma sent photos and videos of vital installations, mostly located in Jammu, Samba and Kathua districts of Jammu and Kashmir to his handlers in Pakistan in lieu of monetary gains, the sources said. He used social media to share the content, they further said, adding that Sharma has confessed to the charges during interrogation.
Sharma told investigating agencies that he shared photos of some bridges on the national highway in border areas to his handlers in Pakistan, the sources said. He received money in return in two bank accounts which reportedly belong to him.
The bank account of Sharma is being analysed for suspicious transactions and investigations are underway, they added.
An espionage racket consisting of seven Indian Navy officials and a Hawala operator was busted in Andhra Pradesh’s Visakhapatnam last year, which houses the Eastern Naval Command. Intelligence agencies suspected that the accused passed information on naval operations to Pakistan.
The men accused of spying were nabbed in a joint operation by the Andhra Pradesh intelligence police and the Naval Intelligence in coordination with central intelligence agencies on Friday.
An alleged operative of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Mohammad Parvez, was arrested by the National Investigation Agency in 2017. Parvez had honey-trapped an army jawan in Jaipur using a fake identity and collected confidential and strategic information and passed it on to the ISI.
A senior police officer from Jaipur said Parvez was a member of a sleeper cell module in Delhi and was acting on commands of the ISI operatives.