September 18: In a case of spying, civilian employees of the Military Engineering Services (MES) from Rewari in Haryana was arrested for passing classified information to a Pakistani Military intelligence unit after getting honey-trapped on Facebook.
On September 16 (Wednesday), based on a specific input of Lucknow based Military Intelligence (MI), the Special Task Force (STF) of the Haryana Police arrested Mahesh Kumar. He was reportedly in touch with operatives of the Pakistani Military intelligence unit since the past two-and-a-half years and has received money from them on multiple occasions.
In June, the Lucknow MI received an input that user of a mobile number, used by Kumar, likely a Military Engineering Services (MES) employees posted in Rajasthan’s Jaipur, was sharing sensitive military information to a young woman associated with Pakistani MI in return for money. It was learnt that he addressed the Pakistani operative as “Madamji“. An operation code-named “Operation Madamji” was launched by the MI unit to identify the suspect and ascertain the veracity of the input.
The accused was identified as 28-year-old Mahesh Kumar, son of Rajendra Singh, a resident of Rewari and worked as civilian cleaning staff in MES Jaipur. He was friends friendship with at least three known and established Pakistani Intelligence Operative (PIO)-run Facebook accounts.
It was also learnt that Kumar had received at least two payments of Rs 5,000 each from his Pakistani handlers via Kerala. The payment module was very similar to what had surfaced in the Rajasthan based espionage case, ‘Op Desert Chase‘ wherein Vikas Kumar and Chiman Lal were arrested.
In the first week of September, Mahesh Kumar was found staying around Rewari and without losing any time, the case was shared with STF Haryana and a joint team of both the agencies started developing it further. A swift operation to apprehend and interrogate the suspect was planned for September 13-14. However, before the Lucknow MI could obtain desired sanctions and place a team near Rewari, the suspect suddenly moved out of Haryana.
Subsequently, STF Haryana indicated that the suspect is likely to visit Rewari again on September 16. Hence, a fresh apprehensions plan was worked out for Thursday or Friday (September 18) jointly. Jaipur-based MI unit also joined the investigation. After the arrival of the suspect at Rewari on Wednesday, the STF team learnt that he has plans to leave Haryana by afternoon.
During questioning Mahesh Kumar admitted to having come in contact with known PIO run-Facebook account in the name of ‘Harleen Gill‘ in July 2018, wherein he only had sent the friend request to the PIO-run account. They became friends on Facebook and used to communicate through text and audio/video chat on Facebook messenger. The account was run by a young woman, likely in her thirties who claimed to be working with Principal Controller of Defence Accounts (PCDA) office in Jalandhar. The PIO’s Facebook account (in name of ‘Harleen Gill’) subsequently got deactivated.
While several instructions and policies are being formulated and passed at regular interval by defence authorities for making all ranks get aware about the nuances of the Pakistani espionage network, it seems many are still getting carried away and still getting honey-trapped on social media by Pakistani agencies.
