Nagpur District Court has sentenced former BrahMos Aerospace engineer Nishant Agarwal to life imprisonment for spying for Pakistan’s intelligence agency, ISI. In addition to life imprisonment, Agarwal will undergo 14 years of rigorous imprisonment (RI) and has been fined Rs 3,000.
The verdict was delivered by Additional Sessions Court Judge MV Deshpande, who found Agarwal guilty under section 235 of the Criminal Procedure Code for offenses punishable under section 66(f) of the IT Act and various sections of the Official Secrets Act (OSA).
Special Public Prosecutor Jyoti Vajani confirmed the sentence, stating, “The court sentenced Agarwal to life imprisonment and RI for 14 years under the Official Secrets Act and fined him Rs 3,000.”
Agarwal, who was employed in the technical research section at BrahMos Aerospace’s missile center 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 accused of leaking sensitive technical information to Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) during his four-year tenure at BrahMos Aerospace, a joint venture between the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and Russia’s military industrial consortium, NPO Mashinostroyenia.
Initially booked under various provisions of the Indian Penal Code and the stringent OSA, Agarwal had been granted bail by the Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court last April.
(with PTI inputs)
