New Delhi: It played out the way it always plays out. He, a young soldier away from his family. She, a beautiful damsel in need of help. They meet and fall in love in the world of WhatsApp, and then begins a story that ends badly for the soldier.
Sepoy Pradeep Kumar (name changed), posted in Punjab, wasn't looking for love when he got a WhatsApp message from an unknown number. The girl called herself Vinaya Sharma and said she was a clerk working for the Principal Controller of Defence Accounts in Pune. Her query was harmless — what’s the difference between a Captain and a Major in the Army?
Pradeep, who with his unit was on Exercise, a military term for simulated war games, liked her DP and responded. Over the next 20 days, love blossomed on WhatsApp. Pradeep was enamoured with the beautiful, bespectacled girl who had a million questions for him.
‘What does an Operations room look like? Could you send me a video?’
He did.
‘Why has your Exercise been extended?’
He told her.
‘What do Army maps look like? Can you send me a close up pic?’
He obliged.
Before Pradeep could ask why she wanted this information came the words that threw common sense out of the window.
'I love you. I want to marry you. Don't ditch me.'
Vinaya spoke to Pradeep's sister and mother about the proposal. She told him she would give him Rs 5,000 from her salary every month to save for their future. Like any young couple, Vinaya and Pradeep would video chat through the night.
Unknown to Sepoy Pradeep, someone was keeping track of his fast-moving love story.
At the Northern Command Headquarters in Jammu’s Udhampur, the Army's counter intelligence unit had smelled a classic honey-trap. Their regular sweeps had fished out 20 similar cases in the last one year. The case that made headlines was the one from Jaisalmer where a Pakistani ISI agent posing as a Captain from the Army Nursing Corps had managed to lure 50 jawans into her trap. Commanding Officers of all Army units were told to sensitise their soldiers and officers about calls from unknown numbers.
"Behind every honey, is a Pakistani Pathan. I don't know how many times I have repeated this line in my unit, but like they say, love is blind," laments a Commanding Officer posted in Punjab.
It certainly was a case of blind love for Pradeep. As he was dreaming of his marriage with Vinaya, the counter intelligence unit laid out a honey-trap of their own. The idea was to track the IP address of the server where Pradeep was getting the messages from. So another ‘damsel in distress’ started chatting with Pradeep, installed a malware on his phone and the game was on. As anticipated, the calls and messages to Pradeep from Vinaya were coming from a server in Pakistan, which had been bounced off from a proxy server in the US.
The information and pictures that Pradeep had shared with Vinaya were not something Pakistan didn't know already. The larger plan was to collect enough data from him, deposit enough money into his account and hold him hostage for more sensitive information. This is stage two of all Pakistan-sponsored spy games where the beautiful girl morphs into a bulky, bearded Pathan blackmailing soldiers into spying against their own country.
Pradeep, all of 26, is in custody and is facing an inquiry. His military career all but over.
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