Arrested on charges of sharing sensitive information with ‘foreign handlers’, HC is set to hear his plea soon.
New Delhi: On 8 October 2018, in what was termed as one of the most alleged high-profile espionage incidents that the country had ever seen, a 28-year-old senior system engineer with the strategic BrahMos missile research centre, Nishant Aggarwal, was arrested by the joint team of anti-terror squad of Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh on charges that he had allegedly shared sensitive information with “foreign handlers”, including operatives of Pakistan’s intelligence agency, the ISI, primarily through his laptop. As per the investigating agency, it was a classic case of “honey trapping”, a process where intelligence agencies employ girls to elicit information. After the initial brouhaha on news channels, the incident was forgotten.
Aggarwal, who is nearly 32 years now, has never been home since then with the trial court and the High Court rejecting his bail applications repeatedly. His Roorkee, Haridwar based family, which approached the Supreme Court, is now hoping to see a favourable decision once the High Court hears his petition which is likely to be heard after the summer vacations ends on 5 June.
In the Supreme Court, where his bail plea was filed on 18 December 2020, Aggarwal was represented, among others, by former Attorney General of India, Mukul Rohatgi, who requested the court to withdraw Aggarwal’s petition with a liberty to approach the High Court again on the ground that his counsel, at the time of hearing of the regular bail application before the said High Court, had not argued the matter on facts and merit. A three-bench judge led by Justice N.V. Ramana on 11 January 2021 allowed the request.
More than thirteen months have passed since then. Speaking to The Sunday Guardian, Prakash Jaiswal, the Nagpur-based lawyer of Nishant, said that the bail application will now be heard by Justice A.G. Gharote of the Mumbai High Court. “There is no case in this. Even the chargesheet filed by the investigating agencies say that his laptop was hacked through the use of a software that was shared with him by a person named Tejal Kapur who was in touch with Nishant regarding a job offer. The agencies say he downloaded the said software so that his CV can be uploaded on it. Even they are saying that there was no intention on his part to share any information. They are saying sensitive information was shared, but the truth is there was no such information with him in his laptop. The chargesheet is based on conjectures. They don’t even know what ‘sensitive information’ was leaked. All their allegations are false,” Jaiswal told The Sunday Guardian.
According to Aggarwal’s family members, he was not even aware that his laptop was hacked. “He came to know it was hacked only after the agencies claimed this. How can he be accused of working in collaboration with an external spy agency when he was not even aware that his laptop had been compromised?” a family member asked.
Aggarwal who had got married just four months before he was arrested, had been kept in solitary confinement in a prison cell in Nagpur. In a letter sent last year to his family members, he had attached a news clipping of another scientist Nambi Narayanan, who was arrested on similar charges in 1994. Later, all the charges proved wrong and he was given a compensation of Rs 1.3 crore by the Supreme Court with the court ordering action against the accused officers who framed him in the case which delayed India’s space capabilities by several years.
Aggarwal, a pass out of National Institute of Technology (NIT), Kurukshetra (Mechanical Engineering), had joined BrahMos Aerospace, a joint venture between Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and Russia’s Military Industrial Consortium that works on India’s supersonic cruise missile BrahMos, which can be launched from land, air, sea and underwater, immediately after passing out in May 2013 because he had already got an offer to join in the end of 2012 due to his strong profile.
After joining Brahmos in July 2013 as a system engineer, he was promoted as a senior system engineer in January 2017, within a short time period of three-and-a-half years. He was awarded the Young Scientist Award 2017-18 by the DRDO.
According to a faculty member with NIT, Kurukshetra, Nishant Aggarwal was a gold medallist, a department topper and was known for exceptional research capabilities. He had presented and published nearly six research papers in various national-international conferences and international journals. In 2012, he was offered the DAAD WISE 2012 Scholarship for research internship at CSI Center of Smart Interfaces, Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany where he worked under the guidance of Professor Dr Cameron Tropea on the topic of “Numerical investigation of laser energy absorption in powder bed.”
When he was arrested, the 28-year-old Aggarwal was heading Hydraulics-Pneumatics and Warhead Integration (Production Department) in which 40 personnel, including systems engineers, technical supervisors and technicians, were involved. He was also a member of CSR and Technology research and development Group of BrahMos, apart from being involved with projects at BrahMos Nagpur and Pilani.