Court reserves judgement on BrahMos engineer accused of espionage

NAGPUR: The Bombay high court has reserved its judgement on a case involving Nishant Agrawal, former award-winning BrahMos Aerospace engineer accused of espionage, who was sentenced to life imprisonment by a sessions court for leaking military secrets to Pakistan.
Agrawal, who worked in a missile assembly unit in Nagpur, had challenged his conviction before the Nagpur bench of Bombay high court. A high court division bench, comprising justice Vinay Joshi and justice Vrushali Joshi, heard the final arguments in the case on Wednesday and reserved the judgement.
During the hearing of the case, it emerged that Agrawal had copied 19 confidential files from the BrahMos facility, with file number 11 being classified as top secret. This file contained vital information about a critical component used in Russian missiles.
According to the prosecution, he was “honey-trapped” and revealed sensitive information on Facebook, despite strict guidelines on the use of social media by people manning sensitive positions.
He was sentenced to life imprisonment by additional session judge-1, MV Deshpande, for espionage on behalf of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), on June 3 of this year.
Agrawal, who worked in the technical research section of BrahMos Aerospace’s missile centre in Nagpur, was arrested in 2018 in a joint operation by the military intelligence and anti-terrorism squads of Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra. He was suspected of leaking sensitive data about BrahMos to his alleged handler in Pakistan, leading to his arrest under stringent provisions of OSA and IPC.
During arguments, the prosecution informed the court that Agrawal had copied a top-secret file about a critical component of the missile developed by Russia. This information could potentially help anti-Indian governments counter the missile. After copying the file from the computers, Agrawal stored it on a laptop, which was later seized from his residence.
The government counsellor informed the court that during searches, the police had seized a laptop, a pen drive, a Nokia phone, and hard disks. The prosecution has also recorded statements from senior officials, including the chief general manager of HR and former director of BrahMos Hyderabad.
According to the prosecution, Agrawal was in contact with a Facebook account under the name of Shejal Kapoor. The police obtained the IP address of this account and phone numbers associated with it. The account was created in Pakistan and was operated by an ISI spy.
The defence counsel argued that the information was not stored on Agrawal’s laptop and challenged the prosecution’s claims. After hearing arguments from both sides, the court has closed the matter for judgement.