BHOPAL: The Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) of the Madhya Pradesh Police has arrested 11 alleged ISI agents from different parts of the state. These agents were sending strategic information to Pakistan and were being paid for their services. Balram of Satna is said to be the kingpin of the group.
Six of them were presented by the ATS in the court of Satish Chandra Malviya and were taken on remand. Jitendra Singh Bhadoria, Kush Pandit, Jitendra Thakur, Ritesh Khullar and Trilok Singh were sent on remand till February 12 and Balram Singh till February 14.
The Home Minister Bhupendra Singh has congratulated the ATS for busting the spying ring. IG, ATS, Sanjiv Sami informed a press conference that five of them were arrested from Gwalior, three from Bhopal, two from Jabalpur and one from Satna.
The police have also seized three phone exchanges from Gwalior, Jabalpur and Bhopal besides hundreds of SIM cards. The arrested persons were using these exchanges to convert voice over internet protocol (VoIP) calls into landline calls, thus making tracing them extremely difficult.
It is suspected that personnel of cellular phone companies were also involved in the crime. This technology was also being used to run lottery and money laundering rackets in the state. Balram, a native of Rewa district, was handling the accounts of the agents working in different parts of the country. Money was transferred into Balram’s account from Pakistan. He, in turn, paid the agents by electronically crediting money into the accounts of the agents.
The MP connection of the ISI espionage network was revealed when two agents Satvinder and Dadu were arrested in Jammu and Kashmir in the month of November 2016. They were sending strategic information related to army including troop movement, maps, and photographs of vehicles and bridges to Pakistan.
Balram revealed the names of ten persons who were being paid by him. Along with the central agencies, the state intelligence agencies of Uttar Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir are still working on digging out the details of the espionage ring. More arrests and seizures may follow, Sami said.
BJP corporator’s relative too involved
The relatives of a BJP corporator of Gwalior Municipal Corporation Vandana Satish Yadav have been arrested in the espionage case. The ATS team had raided various places in the capital city and the persons arrested from Bhopal were taken to various places in MP Nagar from where they had purchased the modems and telephone exchange equipment. They were also taken to cyber cafés from where they were making the calls.
