PATNA: The jawan, who was honeytrapped and arrested at Khagaul in western Patna on Sunday, had leaked the highly sensitive information to a Pakistani intelligence operative (PIO) through WhatsApp, including about the fighting formation called order of battle (ORBAT) of the units under the Southern Command and deployed on the western frontier in Rajasthan and the location of all military hospitals (MHs) across India, reliable sources told TOI on Tuesday.
Sources said the Army’s top brass is trying to neutralise the effect of the information leaked by jawan Ganesh Kumar to the Pakistan army as the enemy can take advantage of it in case of a war. These espionage details surfaced after the preliminary investigation and interrogation of Kumar, intelligence sources said.
“Kumar leaked the information during his posting at Jodhpur Military Hospital reception from January, 2019 to September, 2020 when he got access to several documents containing information about the location where the officers or jawans had come from for admission or check-up. The PIO, who had honeytrapped Kumar while posing herself as the Indian Navy medical team staff posted at Kochi hospital, asked him how he filled the details in admission papers as some of the jawans and officers at her hospital did not mention all these. Then Kumar used to click the documents and shared them on WhatsApp with the PIO. The Pakistan intelligence used to join the dots to know about the deployment of Army units,” a source said.
“Kumar was later transferred to Armed Forces Medical College (AFMC), Pune, in September, 2020. The PIO then extracted information from him about the military hospitals across the country,” the source said.
The action against Kumar, who served the Indian Army Medical Corps, was based on specific information from the Lucknow-based Military Intelligence (MI) unit and the Intelligence Bureau (IB). He had come under their surveillance several months ago.
Kumar, a native of Asthawan village in Nalanda district, was arrested by the Bihar police anti-terrorism squad with the help of IB and MI when he was going by a train to join duty in Pune. He has confessed to sharing information related to national security with the Pakistan operative.
Police and intelligence agencies also found sensitive documents from his cellphone and forwarded him to judicial custody on Monday.
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