Police in Rajasthan have arrested a person on the charge of spying for Pakistan, acting on inputs from Uttar Pradesh cops.
This takes the total number of arrests linked to the espionage network to 28.
“Rajasthan police have arrested a person identified as Akash Deep Singh from Khera Chak village in Sri Ganganagar district. He was in touch with Shahzad Bhatti, a Pakistan-based terrorist,” an Uttar Pradesh police officer told reporters in Ghaziabad
on Friday.
The crackdown was initiated last week when security agencies noticed that some solar-powered CCTVs had been illegally installed at public places and sensitive locations in Ghaziabad’s Sahibabad, and some people were constantly sending footage to their contacts in Pakistan. Half a dozen people were arrested then, but the police soon realised that the network was bigger.
Two days ago, the police rounded up Sameer Shooter from Delhi, Sameer Pathan from Shamli and Shiv Raj from Ghaziabad following inputs that they were part of the Pakistan-linked espionage racket. Shooter hails from Bhagalpur in Bihar and Shiv Raj is from Shahjahanpur in Uttar Pradesh. They came in touch through social media.
Dhawal Jaiswal, additional deputy commissioner of police of Trans-Hindon, said: “Keeping in view the magnitude of the problem, we are working in coordination with central agencies and hope to make more arrests across the country. The arrested persons include six minors and a woman.”
Jaiswal said they had arrested Meera Thakur, 28, from Mathura and Naushad Ali, 20, from Faridabad on Sunday. Ali, who hails from Muzaffarpur in Bihar, had allegedly sent pictures of railway stations in Delhi to his handler in Pakistan.
“The majority of the arrested persons were mostly passing on information to someone known as Sardar aka Sarfaraz aka Jorawar Singh in Pakistan,” he said.
Some other arrested accused have been identified as Suhel Malik, Sane Iram, Raj Valmiki, Ritik Gangwar, Gagan Kumar and Durgesh Nishad.
Police sources claimed that Suhel used to pay ₹5,000 to people for providing sensitive information or installing a CCTV.