Nagpur: More skeletons are tumbling out after Nishant Aggarwal, engineer with BrahMos Aerospace Pvt Ltd arrested for sharing crucial details of the supersonic BrahMos missile project with Pakistani agents, was grilled by security agencies.
During interrogation, Nishant is learnt to have admitted to sharing BrahMos data with a Hyderabad-based senior last year, who is now based in Canada pursuing a doctoral programme.
Sources said Nishant disclosed that he used to chat with one 'Sejal Kapoor' and 'Neha Sharma'. While his chat remained restricted to only a few times with Sharma, whose link has been traced to Pakistan, Nishant had spent considerable time chatting with Canada-based Sejal who had offered him a job in the IT sector in 2017 with a salary of $30,000 a month. As part of the offer, Sejal had asked for some specimen of his work with the BrahMos which Nishant had complied.
Nishant had spent considerable time chatting with Sejal till his wife deleted her ID after coming to know about his regular contact. Sejal had invited Nishant to chat on LinkedIn. Later, she had sent a 'link' to Nishant so that he can chat with her seniors too. A malware was downloaded in Nishant’s computer when he had clicked on that link. Using the malware, the sender started stealing substantial data from Nishant’s computer.
Sources said even Nishant was clueless about how much data had been stolen from his computer which had some presentations about the BrahMos missile and other sensitive information.
It was also learnt that Nishant has named some DRDO officials and his former Hyderabad-based senior as the ones with whom he had shared same information. It was last year that Nishant's Hyderabad-based senior resigned from BrahMos before shifting to Canada.
Following Nishant’s arrest, the ATS sleuths have also questioned some other DRDO officials.