Odisha Police finds involvement of another woman in DRDO espionage case

Bhubaneswar: In a new twist to the DRDO Integrated Test Range (ITR) espionage case, Odisha Police Saturday said it has found the involvement of another woman.

Additional director general of crime branch, Sanjeev Panda said that during investigation it came to the fore that another woman based in Mumbai was also in touch with one of the accused in connection with the espionage case.

The woman had allegedly developed acquaintance with him by claiming that she belonged to Balasore, the native district of the accused.

It is, however, not clear whether she was the same woman who had honey-trapped the five accused and allegedly extracted information from them, the ADG said.

The second woman told the accused person that she hails from Balasore and works in Dubai.

She also asked him to give her Rs 40,000 and promised to return the sum.

The accused had deposited the amount in two installments on April 18 this year in two different bank accounts in Mumbai.

The same amount was deposited in the SBI account of the accused at the bank's Chandipur branch on April 19, Panda said.

He said a crime branch team of Odisha Police will soon visit Mumbai for further investigation into the suspicious financial transactions of the accused.

On September 13 and September 15, the police had arrested the five accused persons working at the ITR in Chandipur on the charge of having links with a foreign agent and supplying credible information to enemies.

Earlier, it had found the involvement of a female operative, suspected to be from Pakistan, in the espionage case.

The police had confirmed that this woman had sent Rs 38000 to one of the accused from a bank in Dubai in two tranches for information on the ITR, from where defence missiles are test launched.

She had used a London SIM card to call the accused persons from Islamabad under different names.