Nishant Agarwal Spy Scandal Explained: Ex-Brahmos Aerospace Engineer Faces Life Imprisonment
The news of the life imprisonment of Nishant Agarwal is all over the internet currently. To those unversed, Nishant Agarwal the ex-Brahmos Aerospace engineer, reports DNA.
On Monday, a Nagpur court handed Nishant to life imprisonment. He has charges against him for spying for Pakistan’s ISI. In 2018, the aerospace engineer was apprehended on a felony of leaking information to the ISI (Pakistan’s intelligence agency) about Brahmos missiles.
Nishant Agarwal was working as a senior system engineer at the Brahmos Aerospace. Brahmos Aerospace was a joint venture between NPO Mashinostroyenia, the Military Industrial Consortium, and DRDO.
This new venture worked on developing a supersonic cruise missile for India which could be effectively rolled out from sea, air, land, and even underwater.
Agarwal is set to witness rigorous imprisonment for 14 long years along with a fine of ₹3000.
As per MV Deshpande, Additional Sessions Court Judge, Nishant Agarwal was convicted under various sections of the Official Secrets Act (OSA), section 66 (f) of the IT Act and section 235 of the Criminal Procedure Code.
Jyoti Vajani, the Special Public Prosecutor stated, “The court sentenced Agarwal to life imprisonment and RI for 14 years under the Official Secrets Act and fined him ₹3,000.”
According to Business Standard, last April, the Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court also granted the ex-engineer bail.
Nishant Agarwal Spy Scandal
In 2018, the first spy scandal involving Nishant Agarwal broke. The scandal-hit Brahmos Aerospace. It was found that the engineer was in touch with Pooja Ranjan and Neha Sharma, two Facebook accounts of Pakistani intelligence operatives.
The Facebook accounts were from Islamabad. Thus, it was believed that they were being operated by Pakistan’s intelligence operatives.
When the scandal broke, Nishant Agarwal’s colleagues were in concussion. He was a winner of DRDO’s Young Scientists award and quite famous for being a bright engineer as well.
Nishant graduated from the National Institute of Technology, Kurukshetra.
