New Delhi: In a major breakthrough, the Delhi Police claims to have busted an all-India spy ring being run by Pakistan's ISI. A serving Border Security Force personnel and four others have been arrested on charges of espionage and supplying details of Indian armed forces to the Pakistani authorities. Some of those arrested even 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 BSF personnel will be brought to Delhi and will be produced in court today. "Legal action will be taken against BSF constable. The law will take its course," said Minister of State for Home Affairs Kiren Rijiju.
Three more people have been arrested by the Special Task Force of the Kolkata Police.
The police 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.
Ijaz secured Indian identities including voter I-card and passport with help from Jahangir and Ashfaq. Irshad also managed to get him a job at the port by exercising his influence at the Trinamool trade union. A couple of weeks ago two brothers, Akhtar and Zafar Khan were arrested from Kolkata under suspicion of working as ISI agents.
The Trinamool Congress has distanced itself from both Ashfaq and Irshad.
The security agencies have conducted raids on spy rings in Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Jammu and Kashmir. Delhi Crime Branch conducted raids and nabbed the ISI handler. The UP Special Task Force conducted raids in the Meerut cantonment area and West Bengal Special Task Force conducted raids in Kolkata.
The first arrest was made by Delhi Crime Branch during a crackdown on an espionage racket in Jammu and Kashmir on November 26. Kafaitullah Khan was arrested from New Delhi Railway Station and sensitive documents related to national security recovered from him while he was en-route to Bhopal.
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