Sources within the Intelligence Bureau (IB) said that the spy network was thriving in connivance with officials of the Pakistan High Commission and their accomplices in India who are working in political parties and government offices.
“The CDRs of the accused have revealed that they were in regular touch with defence personnel and political aides of leaders of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and Samajwadi Party. The complicity of some defence personnel and officials posted with other ministries are also suspected in the network,” an IB official said.
While Samajwadi Party MP Munawar Saleem has already sacked his personal assistant Farhat, who was arrested for supplying sensitive information to Pakistani high commission official Mehmood Akhtar, it was not immediately known whether the NCP leaders whose numbers have cropped up in the CDR had any role in providing secret information to the members of the spy ring. According to the agency officials, the IB was tailing Akhtar for seven months before it arrested him. “We could have caught him long ago, but we did not as we wanted to see his local links and get to them. The involvement of some officials from the armed forces too is being scrutinised, along with those belonging to other departments and who are posted in the border areas,” the official said.
IB officials disclosed that the spy recruiter’s biggest weapon was offering the gullible huge amounts of money. “They are ready to shell out huge amounts of money to entrap them and the recent arrests are just the tip of the iceberg. Once the Indian moles realise that they might be ‘exposed’, they ‘defect’ or cross over, as many recent incidents have revealed,” the official added.