The Special Task Force of the Kolkata Police today arrested a contract labourer, his son and another relative for their alleged links to the Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence (ISI).
Irshad Ansari (51), a contract labourer with Garden Reach Shipbuilders & Engineers Limited (GRSE), his son Asfaq Ansari (23) and relative Mohammed Jahangir - were arrested this afternoon from Dr Sudhir Bose Road in the Iqbalpur police station area in the southern part of the city, a senior STF officer said.
All the accused are residents of the city's Garden Reach area, he said.
Besides recovering several documents revealing their links to the ISI, the STF also seized Fake Indian Currency Notes (FICN) with a face value Rs 2 lakh from Irshad and Rs 1.5 lakh each from his Asfaq and Jahangir, he said.
"A hand-drawn map of the GRSE and the Netaji Subhas Dock in the city were also seized from Irshad who has been working with the warship building company for quite sometime. We are checking what his intention was or whether he had passed on the maps of any other sensitive area to the Pakistani agency or not," the officer said.
The trio have been booked under the Indian Penal Code sections 120B (criminal conspiracy), 121 (waging or attempting to wage war or abetting waging of war against the Government of India), 121A (conspiracy to commit offences punishable by section 121), 489B (using as genuine forged or counterfeit currency notes or bank notes) and 489C (possession of forged or counterfeit currency-notes or bank-notes).
According to Kolkata Police sources, a primary investigation has revealed that both Irshad and Jahangir have relatives in Pakistan's Karachi and they were "hired" by the ISI "as their agents" during their visit to the neighbouring country.
"Both Irshad and Jahangir have been working as ISI agents for more than ten years and their primary job was to pass on information from India.
"They had been visiting Pakistan for several years and there they were trained by the ISI for this specific service. We are further investigating their roles," the senior Kolkata Police official said.
The officer said that the information regarding the
country's defence was passed on to the ISI, electronically and manually by the accused.
"They were using WhatsApp, sometimes emails and at times manually passed on the information. But no calls were made to Pakistan from their mobile numbers," he said, adding that several visits to Bangladesh were made by the accused in recent times.
The role of Asfaq, who is a second year BA student of a south Kolkata college, is yet to be ascertained, he said.
Asked whether the persons had any connection with the suspected Pakistani agent arrested by the Uttar Pradesh STF in Meerut yesterday, the officer said: "We cannot neglect that. We will get in touch with the UP STF."
Meanwhile, Kolkata Police insiders said that the person arrested in UP, Mohammad Ejaz from Islamabad who changed his name to Mohammad Kalam in India, was given shelter by Irshad at his Garden Reach home.
"Irshad had helped Kalam get fake documents such as a fake voter ID card made with a Bareilly address along with a fake Aadhar card, to prove his Indian identity " the source said.
However, family members of the accused alleged that Kolkata Police has "cooked up" a case against them as all the three were "missing" since Thursday morning.
In fact, family members of the three suspected ISI agents claimed to have lodged a "missing diary" with the Garden Reach Police Station on Thursday night itself.
"There is something wrong with the matter. Irshad, Asfaq and Jahangir have been framed. They are not linked to any Pakistani agency... We just have relatives in Pakistan whom we visit at times," a family member, who declined to be named, said.
The GRSE is one of the country's leading shipyards which mainly builds and repairs commercial and naval vessels.
Asked if the three arrested had any connection with the suspected ISI agents Akhtar and Jaffar Khan, nabbed a few weeks back, the officer said, "Nothing can be neglected. Probably they were working as a team scattered in different locations in the city... We have to look into that also."
A city court today remanded Akhtar and Jaffar to 11-day police custody till December 9. The duo was charged under Sections 16, 17 and 18 of the Unlawful Activity Prevention Act, 1967.
