Nagpur, 3 June

The Nagpur district court on Monday handed life imprisonment to former BrahMos Aerospace Pvt Ltd engineer Nishant Agarwal under the Official Secrets Act for spying for Pakistan's intelligence agency ISI.

Agarwal will also have to undergo rigorous imprisonment (RI) for 14 years and was also fined Rs 3,000.

Additional sessions court judge MV Deshpande stated in the order that Agarwal was convicted under section 235 of the Criminal Procedure Code for an offence punishable under section 66 (f) of the IT Act and various sections of the Official Secrets Act (OSA).

"The court sentenced Agarwal to life imprisonment and RI for 14 years under the Official Secrets Act and fined him Rs 3,000," said Special Public Prosecutor Jyoti Vajani.

Agarwal, employed in the technical research section of the company's missile centre in Nagpur, was arrested in a joint operation by the military intelligence and Anti-terrorism squads (ATS) of Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra in 2018.

The former BrahMos Aerospace engineer was booked under various provisions of the Indian Penal Code and the stringent OSA.

He had worked at the Brahmos facility for four years and was accused of leaking sensitive technical information to Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).

BrahMos Aerospace is a joint venture between the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and the military Industrial Consortium (NPO Mashinostroyenia) of Russia. Agarwal was granted bail by the Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court last April.