Reports indicate that Military Engineering Services (MES) employee has been arrested on the charges of providing classified information to Pakistan Military Intelligence. The Indian defence employee was arrested after his crimes came to light as a result of operation Madamji. The employee, Mahesh Kumar, had been providing secret information to Pakistani Military Intelligence since last two and a half years. Reports say, the Madamji operation also uncovered that Mahesh Kumar had allegedly received money from Pakistan Military Intelligence on multiple occasions
After a specific input from the Indian Lucknow based Military Intelligence (MI), the Special Task Force (STF) of the Haryana Police successfully arrested the Indian defence employee on Wednesday, September 16. Indian defence authorities have repeatedly issued instructions and enacted policies to make their personnel aware of tactics used by the Pakistani espionage network. As per statements of the defence officials, it seems that despite these attempts at awareness, many defence officials have still been successfully honey-trapped by Pakistani agencies through social media.
The traps set by “Madamji”
As per an official from Lucknow’s MI unit, it was discovered in June that a mobile number was being used by Mahesh Kumar, a 28-year-old defence employee to share sensitive military information. He was sharing it with a young woman associated with Pakistani MI for money. The official stated, “It was learned that Kumar addressed the Pakistani operative as “Madamji” following which an operation was launched by Lucknow’s MI unit to identify the suspect and ascertain the facts of the input.”
The officer further revealed that Mahesh Kumar and “Madamji” used to communicate through texts, audio and video chat on Facebook messenger. The account was run by a woman in her thirties, she claimed to be working with the Principal Controller of Defence Accounts (PCDA) office in the Jalandhar, Punjab. The PIO’s Facebook account (in name of ‘Harleen Gill’) subsequently got deactivated.
Indian Defence Employee arrested after being honey-trapped
Operation Madamji reportedly revealed that in 2019, the Indian defence employee got another friend request from the same PIO, from a Facebook account with the name ‘Harman Kour’. They started communicating on Facebook messenger and later established contact on WhatsApp. The accused was found to have been in touch with at least two WhatsApp numbers from the PIO. They exchanged text and audio messages between them over WhatsApp and also used video chat. (This is why you should never trust strangers online!)
Sometimes love can make you do things you never imagined, like betraying your own country. Kumar allegedly used to gather movement-related information by striking a conversation with service personnel coming to the Jaipur MES office for various purposes. He also purportedly confessed to having activated a WhatsApp number for the PIO by sharing a one-time password (OTP) in 2019. However, he claims that he took it back within a couple of days. In the words of William Shakespeare, this situation can be best described as, “these violent delights have violent ends.”
