The suspect, who came in touch with the woman through Facebook, was arrested for sharing sensitive missile information.
Published Jun 18, 2022 | 2:58 PM ⚊ Updated Jul 21, 2022 | 5:00 PM
An engineer has been arrested for passing classified information to a suspected ISI agent. (Creative Commons)
The Rachakonda Police on Friday, 17 June, arrested an employee of the DRDL from Balapur in Hyderabad in connection with a honey-trap case.
The police identified the suspect as Dukka Mallikarjuna Reddy, a 29-year-old contractual employee at the Research Centre Imarat (RCI) of the Defence Research and Development Laboratory (DRDL).
He is said to be a native of Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh.
The arrest was made by the Special Operations Team of the LB Nagar Zone in a joint operation with the Balapur police from Reddy’s residence in Triveni Nagar in Meerpet, Balapur.
The police have booked Reddy under IPC Section 409 (criminal breach of trust by public servant) and Sections 3 (1) (C), 5 (3), 5 (1) (A) of the Official Secrets Act, 1923 at the Balapur Police Station under the Rachakonda Police Commissionerate.
The police have also seized two mobile phones, a SIM card, and a laptop from Reddy, who is the son of a 2014 retired official in the Naval Armament Depot (NAD).
The arrest comes close on the heels of an Indian Air Force official being court-martialled in May after he was found to have been honey-trapped.
A honey trap is one of the oldest deception practices in espionage, and involves romantic or sexual relationships.
The women coerce or persuade a target into supplying usually classified and secret information and at times money.
Dukka Mallikarjuna Reddy. (Rachakonda Police/Twitter)
In the current case, the cops said that Reddy, a quality assurance engineer, received a friend request on Facebook from a woman named Natasha Rao in March 2020 after he uploaded a status message about his new job with DRDL.
The woman — suspected to be a woman operative of Pakistan’s espionage agency Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) — introduced herself as an employee of a UK-based defence journal and a former resident of Bengaluru.
The police said Reddy, who was working on a classified naval system programme, started sharing highly confidential photos and literature on Indian missile development at the woman’s request, having fallen in love with her and promised her marriage.
Reddy also shared his bank-account details with her.
The transfer of information continued till December 2021, when Reddy suspected something fishy as the woman changed her Facebook name to Simran Chopra and Omisha Addii, according to the police.
