Defence staff held for sharing confidential info with suspected ISI woman 'handler'

A contractual employee of a Defence laboratory here was arrested for allegedly sharing confidential information with a suspected ISI female handler, police said on Saturday.

Acting on credible information, the police arrested the contractual employee of Defence Research and Development Laboratory (DRDL) on June 17, a release said.

The employee had allegedly leaked ”highly secure and confidential information of DRDL-RCI complex through social media with a suspected ISI female handler, which is prone to create harm to national integrity and security,” it said. The accused, who has completed engineering in 2014, had worked as a ‘quality check engineer’ in a private firm in Visakhapatnam and quit the job in 2018.

Later, he worked at the Hyderabad branch of a Bengaluru-based company, which had secured a project from the DRDL.

The company, however, did not get any further project from DRDL subsequently. In February 2020, he directly approached DRDL authorities to enroll him as a contract employee in a project. Since then, he continued to work at the same location at RCI, Balapur in the city.

In March 2020, the accused had received a friend’s request from Natasha Rao and accepted it. The woman introduced herself as an employee of ”UK Defence Journal” and claimed that she was into publishing, it added.

During a conversation with her, the accused is said to have shared confidential information.

He also shared his bank account number with Natasha Rao, who was in touch with him till December, 2021.

The Defence staff was arrested on June 17 and a case on charges of criminal breach of trust by public servant and also under relevant sections of Official Secret was registered.