The Nagpur district court on Monday sentenced former BrahMos Aerospace Pvt Ltd engineer Nishant Agarwal to life imprisonment under the Official Secrets Act for spying for Pakistan’s intelligence agency, ISI.
In addition to life imprisonment, Agarwal received 14 years of rigorous imprisonment (RI) and was fined Rs 3,000. The court’s decision, delivered by Additional Sessions Court Judge M.V. Deshpande, convicted Agarwal under section 235 of the Criminal Procedure Code for an offence punishable under section 66(f) of the IT Act and various sections of the Official Secrets Act (OSA).
“The court sentenced Agarwal to life imprisonment and RI for 14 years under the Official Secrets Act and fined him Rs 3,000,” said Special Public Prosecutor Jyoti Vajani.
Agarwal, who worked in the technical research section of BrahMos Aerospace’s missile centre in Nagpur, was arrested in 2018 during a joint operation by military intelligence and the Anti-Terrorism Squads (ATS) of Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra.
He was charged under various provisions of the Indian Penal Code and the stringent OSA. Agarwal had been employed at the BrahMos facility for four years and was accused of leaking sensitive technical information to Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). He was granted bail by the Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court last April.
BrahMos Aerospace is a joint venture between the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and the Russian military industrial consortium NPO Mashinostroyenia.
