Delhi police said yesterday they have arrested an Indian Air Force officer on charges of passing secrets to Pakistan’s spy service.
Police said the man, who is accused of giving details of air force exercises to Pakistan’s powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), had fallen victim to a “honey trap”.
“Ranjith K K has accepted to have passed air force-related information pertaining to a recent air force exercise, movements of aircraft and deployment of various units in air force,” Ravindra Yadav, Delhi police joint commissioner of crime, said in a statement.
The arrest comes days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi paid a surprise visit to his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif to try to ease troubled relations.
The neighbours frequently accuse each other of spying on military activities.
Ranjith, hailing from Kerala, was arrested from Punjab at the Bathinda airbase.
An IAF official said Ranjith, who was a Leading Aircraftman with the air force, was dismissed on Monday evening after evidence was found against him.
“It was a long drawn case. After an internal administrative inquiry, we dismissed Ranjith around 5.30pm on Monday,” the official, on condition of anonymity, said.
Yadav said crime branch officials, who have already been probing the ISI espionage racket since the arrest of some people earlier this month, had shared information with the IAF about Ranjith’s suspected links with ISI.
“Ranjith was later detained by the IAF and handed over to us. We arrested him on Monday and brought him to Delhi on transit remand,” Yadav said.
He said the ISI used a woman to lure him into passing on top-secret information through mobile phone and the Internet.
The police official said Ranjith had begun to chat with the woman over Facebook. He was in touch with a person having a Facebook profile of “Damini McNaught”, who portrayed that she was an executive of a Britain-based magazine.
The woman said the magazine wanted some information about the Indian Air Force, and promised pecuniary benefits in exchange.
Yadav said Ranjith joined the IAF in 2010.
“As per the investigation so far, it has been assessed that (he) was befooled by the cross-border spies,” Yadav added.
“She interviewed Ranjith and then assigned him the task of getting the information. She deceived him by saying that the information will be published,” said Yadav.
Ranjith is the sixth person to be arrested by the Delhi police for being part of an espionage racket backed by ISI.
Five other people, including a serving and a former army officer and a serving Borders Security Force office, were arrested earlier this month.