By Our Correspondent
BHUBANESWAR/CUTTACK: Additional Director General of Police, CID-CB Sanjeeb Panda on Tuesday revealed that One of the five accused, those who had shared vital classified information of DRDO’s Integrated Testing Range (ITR) Chandipur with foreign players, has received a cash transfer of around Rs 38,000 from a bank account in Dubai. The investigating agency, CID-CB have seized the mobile phones of all the five accused and verifying their bank account details and social networking sites like Facebook and Instagram, ADGP Panda said.
On September 14, the Balasore police had arrested the 5 former DRDO contractual employees on charges of sharing classified defence information with unknown foreign agents, who were suspected to be from Pakistan. The accused persons are — Basanta Behera (52), AC operator; Hemanta Kumar Mistri (52), diesel genset operator; Tapas Ranjan Nayak (41), employee at ITR main gate; Sk. Musafir (32), AC operator; and Sachin Kumar, a driver — all from Balasore district.
ADGP Panda said they also found that the unknown woman operative introduced herself with several names and trapped people on popular social networking sites like Facebook and Instagram. She trapped the accused in the Balasore case and interacted with them over Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp. During investigation, we found she was using a UK SIM, added Panda.
The ADG of Police further informed that a team of the Indian Air Force (IAF) had also interrogated the accused in the past two days while the National Investigation Agency (NIA) is yet to interrogate the arrested persons presently at on remand of Odisha crime branch.
