How Thane Techie Spied For Pakistan's ISI, Shared Info On Indian Warships

A week after a 27-year-old man from Maharashtra was arrested in an alleged espionage case, it has now emerged how he spied for his Pakistani agents and the information that he shared with them.

Ravi, a mechanical engineer based in Thane, had shared intelligence about Indian warships and submarines with his Pakistani handler. He had provided inputs about 14 Navy ships, out of which the inputs about five ships were accurate.

For this, he received money from Pakistan's spy agency Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the police said.

Ravi was "honey-trapped" by a Pakistani agent who had befriended him on Facebook, posing as a woman, officials had earlier said. He was found sharing sensitive information with the Pakistani operative through WhatsApp, officials said.

Based on a tip-off, he was arrested on May 29 by the Thane unit of the Anti-Terrorism Squad.

He has been charged with criminal conspiracy and relevant sections of the Official Secrets Act. Two others who were taken into custody along with him were left off after an inquiry.

Indian agencies had heightened surveillance in the aftermath of the Pahalgam terror attack and the subsequent India-Pakistan tensions. Over a dozen men and women have been arrested on charges of sharing sensitive information with Pakistani intelligence operatives.

This includes two influencers, travel vlogger Jyoti Malhotra and YouTuber Jasbir Singh. Both had over a million subscribers on YouTube and had travelled to Pakistan multiple times. They are currently being probed. A student from Punjab and a security guard from Haryana are among others who face charges of leaking classified information across the border.