Pune. A scientist at the Defense Research and Development Organisation, who fell victim to a honey trap, had promised a Pakistani woman spy an intelligence report on the country’s dreaded BrahMos missile project.
Maharashtra’s Anti-Terrorism Squad investigation on this espionage case has revealed that scientist Pradeep Kurulkar had said in a WhatsApp chat that he would show a very secretive report of the BrahMos missile to a Pakistani woman spy.
This Pakistani female spy introduced herself as Zara Dasgupta during a private meeting with scientist Pradeep Kurulkar. The female detective contacted Kurulkar on WhatsApp.
Kurulkar, 59, was arrested on May 3 by the ATS under sections of the Official Secrets Act for espionage and having links with a female spy from Pakistan in a suspected honey trap case.
According to the ATS, the Pakistani woman spy is also now a wanted accused in the case. She told that she was a software engineer in Britain.
The woman lured him by sending several obscene messages, making voice and video calls and Kurulkar had multiple conversations with her between June 10, 2022 and February 24, 2023.
The ATS has alleged that Zara wanted to extract confidential information from Kurulkar about DRDO and several defense projects in India. Kurulkar became ‘attracted’ to her and allegedly abused his position to share confidential information.
During the investigation, the ATS retrieved the WhatsApp chats between the two. Which has been combined into a charge sheet (which has six volumes and 1,837 pages) and presented before a special court in Pune. According to the chargesheet, the two had a conversation about BrahMos between October 19, 2022 and October 28, 2022.
