M A I N   N E W S

Naval officer held for espionage

Visakhapatnam, August 25
The Chief Security Officer in the Naval Armament Depot (NAD) of the Eastern Naval Command (ENC) headquarters here was today arrested on the charge of spying for Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) agency.

Lieutenant Commander Raj Kumar of the NAD, along with his former colleague B.S. Panwar, who had allegedly recruited him on behalf of the ISI, will be produced before a city court tomorrow.

Their accomplice, Raj Bir Singh, Deputy Chief Petty Officer in the Navy, was arrested on August 12. With the arrest of the three the entire espionage ring in the ENC has been busted, the police commissioner A.K. Khan announced here today.

“Interpol will be alerted for further evidence, if necessary. But we have got all irrefutable evidence establishing the link between the ISI and the three,’’ he said.

The city police in collaboration with naval higher-ups had been making efforts to explore the possible involvement of three or four other naval officers in the spy ring, Mr Khan added.

Panwar, who had quit the Navy and floated his own private agency “Bureau Security Services’’ in Delhi, was earlier arrested in 1999 in an espionage case and was enlarged on bail from the Tihar jail after a charge sheet was filed. On a “transit warrant’’ he was brought here from Delhi by the city police yesterday.

The trio working under a Pakistani agent, operating from Kathmandu under the alias “Ramesh Sharma’’ had visited him in July 1996. They used to get cash “compensation’’ from yet another Pakistani settled in Delhi, Tehar Ali Alias Rakesh Kumar Sharma, who was at large since the arrest of Panwar in the 1999 espionage case.

All bank documents relating to payments, travel documents to and fro Kathmandu, besides the incriminating classified material seized during the raids conclusively proved their involvement in the espionage case.

Two employees, including G.S. Pandey of the Delhi-based courier services, Seedlings Courier, who used to help the agents to pass on the “secret documents’’ to the Pakistan agent in Kathmandu, were at large. UNI