Reports of detention of officer, ‘Honey Trapping’, money exchange at this stage are pure speculation and neither ac… https://t.co/STlHfUangU — ANI (@ANI) 1518672722000

NEW DELHI: A senior Army official on Thursday dismissed reports of a Lieutenant Colonel posted at Jabalpur in Madhya Pradesh falling prey to a honeytrap by Pakistani intelligence as "pure speculation", reported ANI.The assertion comes after the officer in question was picked up for questioning by a team from the Army Headquarters in Delhi. The Army’s counter-intelligence (CI) wing and Military Intelligence (MI) also carried out searches at his official premises."Reports of detention of officer, 'honey trapping', money exchange at this stage are pure speculation and neither accurate nor substantiated. Details on the outcome of the enquiry will be intimated in due course as per progress," the senior Army official told ANI.A preliminary enquiry was ordered on February 12 by the Army to ascertain facts on suspected leakage of classified info from IT devices of a Lt Colonel posted in Jabalpur. It is yet to be established whether it has happened inadvertently or deliberately as reported, the official said.There are multiple theories doing rounds and it’s not clear if the Lt Colonel was honey-trapped or is being investigated in a corruption case. It is also being alleged that the officer has fallen victim to spear phishing e-mails due to which some classified information got leaked. Spear phishing is a targeted e-mail-spoofing attack, different from phishing for financial gain, and is solely aimed at unauthorized access to sensitive information.The officer was questioned for a few hours at Army Central command headquarters and taken to Lucknow for further investigations. Sources told TOI that certain crucial documents were collected from his office."The officer has only been questioned as part of ongoing enquiry and nothing else. Therefore he continues to perform his routine duties in unit. Evidence related to case including digital evidence has been seized and sent for further forensic analysis," the Army official confirmed.The incident came days after Group Captain Arun Marwah , posted at the IAF headquarters, was interrogated by the IAF's counter-intelligence wing on charges of espionage and subsequently handed over to the Delhi Police.The Group Capt was allegedly leaking classified documents to a woman, suspected to be an ISI spy, he had befriended on Facebook in December last year through WhatsApp, according to investigators.(With inputs from PTI)