India News | Spy Racket Busted by Army Intelligence, Raj Police; MTS Worker of Railways Postal Service Arrested

Jaipur, Sep 10 (PTI) Army intelligence and police in Rajasthan have busted a "unique" spy racket by arresting a multi-tasking staff worker of the railways postal service for passing information by clicking photographs of defence-related letters, officials said on Friday.

The worker, identified as Bharat Godara, was under surveillance of the Army's intelligence agency for some time after technical inputs suggested that some pictures were being passed to Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agents across the border, they said.

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According to the officials, Godara, a multi-tasking staff (MTS) worker who was posted in the sorting hub of the Railway Postal Service, used to open all letters that had the address of the Army Postal Office (APO).

This is for the first time that this kind of a spy racket has been unravelled where postal letters meant for Army personnel, both official as well as personal, were being passed on to the ISI, they said.

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On Facebook messenger, he had come in contact with a woman, who claimed to be a nursing assistant posted at Port Blair in Andaman and Nicobar Island, and in the last seven months, Godara, who worked only night shifts, opened letters marked with APO address, clicked pictures and sent it to her, the officials said.

The "bond" between the two had grown stronger and they were talking on video calls through WhatsApp, they said, adding that the accused had helped her in activating the WhatsApp account with an Indian number, which she used for spying.

The officials said that sensitive information regarding locations, phone numbers of officers, pincodes of various Army units and other information was compromised by the MTS worker. He sent these to the woman, who was an agent working for the Pakistani snooping agency ISI, they said.

Godara was arrested on Thursday night in a joint operation by the Military Intelligence (Southern Command) and the state intelligence.

Godara, who has been arrested under the Officials Secrets Act, is being interrogated jointly by central and state agencies, during which he has claimed to have passed on a number of Army-related letters to Pakistan's agents.

The officials said that defence-related letters and photos have been recovered from his mobile phone.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)