An engineer with the BrahMos Aerospace unit in Nagpur was arrested on Monday on the suspicion that he had passed on sensitive “technical information” to Pakistani spy agency ISI.

Nishant Agarwal was arrested from his rented home at Nagpur’s Ujjwal Nagar early on Monday by the anti-terrorism squad of Uttar Pradesh police, which is probing leads provided by an alleged ISI agent it has picked up. All of Agarwal’s electronic gadgets have been seized.

Agarwal, in his mid-20s, has been working with BrahMos Aerospace for the past four years. Sources said he had been under the surveillance of Uttar Pradesh ATS sleuths, working in close coordination with the military intelligence, since Sunday.

“Some very sensitive information was found on him. There is also evidence of his chatting with Pakistan-based users on Facebook,” said Asim Arun, the inspector-general of the Uttar Pradesh ATS.

A defence spokesperson clarified that Agarwal worked with BrahMos Aerospace, not the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) as reported earlier in the day. BrahMos Aerospace is a joint venture between the DRDO and NPI Mashinostroyeniya, a Russian military industrial consortium.

ATS sources said whether Agarwal was in touch with any agency other than the ISI was being investigated.

According to the sources, Agarwal’s name came up during the interrogation of a suspected ISI agent and two DRDO employees arrested in Kanpur by the Uttar Pradesh ATS.

“All three had contact with Agarwal. The agent had created a fake profile on Facebook to communicate with Agarwal,” a source said.

The ATS suspects that Agarwal passed on information through the suspected ISI agent. Agarwal’s Facebook profile says he works as a “systems engineer” at BrahMos Aerospace and that he received an award two weeks ago.

“While BrahMos has completed 20 supersonic years, I got blessed with ‘Young Scientist Award’ from the hands of Secretary Defence R&D and Chairman DRDO, His Excellency Russian Ambassador to India and BrahMos CEO & MD,” Agarwal wrote, sharing a photograph of him receiving the award.

Agarwal, who hails from Uttarakhand’s Roorkee, got married in March this year.

Last month, the Uttar Pradesh ATS arrested a BSF soldier from Noida on the charge of sharing information with Pakistani agents. An agent posing as a defence correspondent had honey-trapped the soldier, Achutanand Mishra, into sharing information about unit operational details, a police academy and a training centre.