Chennai, Oct 5:
A 31-year-old Indian Navy sailor was arrested on Saturday evening on espionage charges for leaking key and sensitive defence/maritime data linked to Visakhapatnam Naval base, to a woman Pakistani Intelligence operative.
The sailor, Pradeep Mukherjee of West Bengal, was lured into a honeytrap by the woman operative after befriending him on social media a few months ago, sustained it and extracted sensitive data from him on strategic naval assets, fleet movements and operational framework of the Visakhapatnam base.
He was arrested by the Counter Intelligence (CI) Wing of the Andhra Pradesh Police, which landed at INS Agrani in Coimbatore–where he arrived just a week ago to attend a management development course.
Commissioned into the Navy as a sailor in 2014, he was posted under the Eastern Naval Command in Vizag and came to INS Agrani, which is a leadership training facility of Indian Navy at Red Fields in Coimbatore.
After keeping Mukherjee under surveillance after detecting suspicious digital footprints, the CI Wing, an elite wing focussed on nuetralising terror modules, countering cross-border espionage and high security and terror threats, initiated the investigation, confirmed leakage of maritime data, secured clearance for top naval authorities, and arrested him.
After obtaining a transit warrant from a Coimbatore court, Pradeep was taken to CI headquarters in Vijayawada last evening for further interrogation.