Pakistani spies posing as young Indian women with alluring names are honeytrapping officials in the Indian defence establishment, reveal court papers about Nishant Agrawal, a former scientist of Brahmos Aerospace Private Limited’s (BAPL) Nagpur unit recently convicted of leaking military secrets.
Sejal Kapoor, Arohi Alok, Aditi Aaron, Aditi Agrawal, Anamika Sharma, Divya Chandan Roy, Neha Sharma and Pooja Ranjan – these are some of the names used.
Uttar Pradesh’s Anti-Terrorist Squad (UP-ATS) arrested Agrawal in Oct 2018. He was sentenced to life by a court in Nagpur earlier this month.
Pankaj Awasthi, UP-ATS investigation officer, said in his deposition during Agrawal’s trial that one ‘Sejal’ had set up a Facebook account from Pakistan. Using this, she chatted with Pakistani operatives and her Indian targets.
Cyberattack plan
The chats showed she was part of a group that shared tips on deceiving Indian defence officials. Awasthi added that one of the chats showed the group was trying to launch a cyberattack.
According to Awasthi, Sejal introduced herself to Agrawal as a recruiter from a UK-based company, and as a student from Manchester to a former IAF staffer.
Agrawal’s profile had mentioned that he was a senior systems engineer at Brahmos Aerospace. He was also Facebook friends with two other individuals, Neha Sharma and Pooja Ranjan, whose accounts too were active from Pakistan, testified Awasthi.
Agrawal had chatted with Sejal on Linked-in too, where she showed interest in hiring him. Awasthi told the court that on Sejal’s directions, Agrawal had clicked on links sent by her and installed three apps – Qwhisper, Chat to Hire and X-trust – on his personal laptop in 2017.
The apps were malware that stole data from Agrawal’s laptop, which contained classified information. Sejal and other spies tried to contact other defence officials too, Awasthi told the court.
In the case of the Lucknow-based former IAF officer, the sleuths came across romantic chats between him and Sejal. However, the officer was not included as an accused. Sejal had sent the data-stealing malware Qwhisper to this officer, too. However, no secret records or evidence of crime was found in his personal laptop. The officer admitted chatting with Sejal.
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