Virtually honey-trapped by ISI, Army jawan arrested in Jaisalmer over espionage charges

An Indian Army jawan posted in a tank regiment in Jaisalmer has been arrested by the Rajasthan Police after he was allegedly found to be virtually honey trapped by Pakistan-based ISI operatives on social media and passing critical military information to them.

"The jawan has been arrested in Jaisalmer by the Rajasthan Police and the Army is providing all possible assistance to the civilian authorities in this investigation," Defence PRO Colonel Sambit Ghosh told ANI over the phone.

The jawan, identified as Sombir, belongs to Haryana and was posted in the Armoured Corps of the Indian Army.

Sources in the Army said the jawan was in touch with a suspected ISI spy using the profile name of 'Anika Chopra' on Facebook and was chatting regularly on the social media and exchanging details and information about the jawan's armoured unit and its movement.

The Army is now tracking multiple accounts of officers and jawans to probe if the Pakistani spy account was in touch with other personnel to get information from them, they said.

In the recent past, a Group Captain of the Indian Air Force was apprehended by the counter-intelligence units of the Army, Air Force and the Intelligence Bureau for sharing information about transport aircraft operations as he was posted in the Air Headquarters here.

A BrahMos employee was also caught where the Pakistani spy had used the same modus operandi to trap the official.

Sources in the Army said the jawan was apprehended and interrogated by intelligence agencies for over four months after he was found to be in touch with Pakistani ISI operatives on social media and was being interrogated by the intelligence agencies and the Army for the information supplied by him to the Pakistani spy agency.