On Monday, the Nagpur district court sentenced former BrahMos Aerospace Pvt Ltd engineer Nishant Agarwal to life imprisonment under the Official Secrets Act for espionage on behalf of Pakistan’s intelligence agency ISI.
In addition to life imprisonment, Nishant Agarwal received 14 years of rigorous imprisonment and a fine of Rs 3,000.
The verdict was delivered by Additional Sessions Court Judge MV Deshpande, who found Agarwal guilty under section 235 of the Criminal Procedure Code, section 66 (f) of the IT Act, and various sections of the Official Secrets Act (OSA).
Special Public Prosecutor Jyoti Vajani stated, “The court sentenced Agarwal to life imprisonment and RI for 14 years under the Official Secrets Act and fined him Rs 3,000.”
Nishant Agarwal, who worked in the technical research section of BrahMos Aerospace’s missile center in Nagpur, was apprehended in 2018 during a joint operation by military intelligence and the Anti-Terrorism Squads (ATS) of Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra.
He was charged under multiple provisions of the Indian Penal Code and the OSA for leaking sensitive technical information to Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).
BrahMos Aerospace is a collaboration between India’s Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and Russia’s military industrial consortium NPO Mashinostroyenia. Agarwal had been employed at the BrahMos facility for four years prior to his arrest.
Last April, Nishant Agarwal was granted bail by the Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court.
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