The Delhi Crime branch has arrested a former Indian Air Force personnel Ranjit on charges of working for the Pakistan intelligence agency ISI. The accused was caught red-handed in Bhatinda giving out vital information.
He hails from Kerala and was being tracked for the past 3-4 months. He was dismissed by the Air Force on Monday and will be produced before the Patiala House court on Tuesday.
Earlier, an Army personnel and a head constable of the BSF were arrested on charges of espionage. More than six people linked to the armed forces have been arrested so far.
The Delhi Police had in November claimed to have busted an all-India spy ring being run by ISI. A serving Border Security Force personnel and four others had been arrested on charges of espionage and supplying details of Indian armed forces to the Pakistani authorities. Some of those arrested also allegedly had links with Trinamool Congress in West Bengal.
ISI handler Kafaitullah Khan was arrested for passing on information on deployment of security forces and Indian Air Force for 10 years and is suspected to have contacts in the Army too. Sources said that two of the arrested operatives got documents related to the movement and deployment of Army’s 31st Armoured Division in Jhansi. The arrested BSF constable is Abdul Rasheed who was posted in Rajouri, Jammu and Kashmir. Rasheed and Kafaitullah Khan are relatives. Rasheed is supposed to be Kafaitullah Khan's main source.
The police had arrested 52-year-old Irshad Ansari and claimed that the accused is a trained spy who supplied information, maps and photographs of Indian naval vessels and vital defence establishments to the ISI for the past 10 years. Irshad Ansari is a contract labourer at Calcutta Port and an INTTUC (TMC's trade union wing) member at the Garden Reach Ship Builders Employees' Union.
The second accused arrested by the Kolkata Police is Ashfaq Ansari, son of Irshad. He is a Political Science student and the general secretary of TMC-led students' union at Harimohan Ghosh College at the Kidderpore area of Kolkata. He was suspended in October for anti-party activities.
The third arrested is 48-year-old Md Jahangir, Ashfaq's maternal uncle. He is a tailor by profession and allegedly an expert in making fake passport. The police recovered maps of the Netaji Subhas dock at Calcutta Port and the Garden Reach Ship Builders and Engineers establishment and counterfeit Indian currency of over Rs 3 lakh from their residences.
The trio have been slapped with sections 121 (waging war against state), 120 B (criminal conspiracy) and 489 C (possessing counterfeit currency) and it carry maximum sentence of death or life imprisonment.
The arrest was made following a tip off reportedly from interrogation of Md. Ijaz, a trained ISI agent and a Pakistani national who was arrested from Meerut in UP on November 27. Ijaz, son of a government employee, left Islamabad in 2013 and reached Bangladesh from where he sneaked into Bengal through the Basirhat border in North 24 Parganas district.
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