CHANAKYA’S ARTHASHASTRA TALKS about vishkanyas (poison maidens) who seduce men into revealing secrets and, if need be, kill them with a poisonous kiss. This honeytrap trick in espionage was used effectively by seductive Russian spies, commonly known as swallows, during the Cold War era. Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) has now refined it into a no-cost, no-hazard tactic, without even employing seductresses—all thanks to virtual ‘sexpionage’.

On October 8, a senior systems engineer at BrahMos Aerospace Private Limited in Nagpur was arrested for allegedly leaking sensitive data to the ISI. Nishant Agarwal, in his late 20s, was lured by the ISI through two fake Facebook accounts. ‘Neha Sharma’ and ‘Pooja Ranjan’ had sent him friend requests in 2016. Swayed by their pictures and sweet talk, Nishant allegedly leaked classified “technical’’ information to them. He was arrested in a joint operation by the anti-terror squads of Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra.

When the Maharashtra ATS searched his office and residence, it found sensitive and secret data on his personal laptop, which is a violation of the Official Secrets Act. Before joining BrahMos in Nagpur, Nishant had worked at its Hyderabad unit. A forensic analysis of the data extracted from the computers in both units could indicate the extent of leaks. This is the first spy scandal that has rocked BrahMos Aerospace, a joint venture between India’s Defence Research and Development Organisation and Russia’s Military Industrial Consortium that makes critical components of the BrahMos missile.

BSF constable Achyutanand Mishra

Uttar Pradesh ATS chief Asim Arun told THE WEEK that the ISI had been creating fake accounts using female names to trap armed forces and central police personnel and recruit them as spies. “The modus operandi of the ISI is to first compromise a person and then threaten him with exposure,” he said. “The only way out for him is to share secrets. Sometimes they are also offered monetary benefits.”

The UP ATS seized personal laptops and smartphones of two persons who were associated with Nishant in Kanpur and Agra, but no incriminating material was found. Nishant’s father, P.K. Agarwal, told THE WEEK: “My son won the Best Young Scientist Award recently. He is a decent, educated and mature young boy. He is being trapped, and my suspicion is that it could be part of some international conspiracy so that the young talent of the country does not flourish.” He said Nishant had never shared details of his work with his family. “A mature person like him will never share anything on social media,” said Agarwal, a senior medical officer. “And, why would a technologically savvy person like him do it from his own ID?”

According to the ATS, Nishant was hooked by the same ISI handlers who honeytrapped Border Security Force constable Achyutanand Mishra. It was while interrogating Mishra, who was arrested from Noida on September 19, that the ATS came across two new Facebook IDs that led them to Nishant.

In Mishra’s case, the first tip-off came from the Military Intelligence unit in Chandigarh. Mishra was befriended by ‘Kajol Sharma’, who claimed to be a defence reporter, on Facebook in 2016. Enticed by the ‘woman’, the father of two allegedly passed on sensitive details about his unit’s location, pictures and videos, besides details of weapons and ammunition used by the forces deployed along the Indo-Pak border. “As the closeness grew, they talked on WhatsApp, and Mishra saved her number as ‘Pakistan friend’. There were regular messages from his number to a Pakistani number, and he sent several sex videos as well. The chats also reveal that he was being motivated to change his religion and fed anti-India ideas on Kashmir,” said an ATS officer. The ATS is also checking Mishra’s bank accounts to see whether he was paid by the ISI.

The Intelligence Bureau has made a list of several virtual vishkanyas—Smita Patel, Amita Amey, Sonu Kaur, Shahzadi, Beautybee, to name a few. Two such ‘maidens’ allegedly seduced Group Captain Arun Marwah, joint director, operations (para) at the IAF Headquarters in Vayu Bhavan. Marwah received a friend request on Facebook from one Kiran Randhawa last year. “In the first week of January, I went on leave to Port Blair with my family. After I returned, chatting with Kiran became more explicit,” Marwah told his interrogators. “On January 8, I received another request from someone called Mahima Patel, and I added her also.”

Fatal attraction: Gourav Kumar, an Army aspirant, allegedly sent photos of military areas to ‘Amita Amey’.

Around January 20, Kiran gave him her WhatsApp number, and asked him to chat on hookup apps, where both users can use a common secure password. Soon, he began giving her details of the IAF’s Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief operations. Simultaneously, Mahima, ‘starry-eyed’ about all things military and macho, was getting interested in learning about para operations, its planning, training and exercise. Marwah allegedly sent her classified documents about para training on January 14.

The Delhi Police’s special cell officers, who arrested Marwah, checked the IP addresses of Kiran and Mahima and found both to be in Pakistan. The ‘girls’ could very well have been hefty, bearded men sitting in front of a laptop somewhere in Rawalpindi.

But, Marwah’s lawyer Neela Gokhale said there is nothing in the charge-sheet to prove he has committed any crime. “There are no sex chats attached in the charge-sheet,” she said. “Moreover, whatever information is alleged to have been divulged on Facebook was already known to all and available on the internet.”

R.K. Yadav, a former Research and Analysis Wing officer and author of Mission R&AW, told THE WEEK that he had been regularly receiving messages and requests on social media and WhatsApp. The ISI, he said, has created many fake accounts of people posing as travellers, foodies or beauticians and posting related write-ups to strike up conversations. “There are also special apps created for this purpose,” he said. “But those who understand spy games would not fall into their trap.”

The Army, though aware of the menace, is not sure how to tackle it. Last December, the government issued an advisory to military and paramilitary personnel to stop using 42 mobile apps, including Truecaller, WeChat, UC Browser, UC News, YouCam Makeup and BeautyPlus, most of which are of Chinese origin and have spyware or malware. Truecaller said that it had nothing to do with the problem and that the app was completely safe.

In September, Army chief General Bipin Rawat said soldiers could not be denied the use of smartphones, but there was an urgent need to leverage the medium to “our” advantage. “We are undertaking an overall study to restructure the Army Headquarters. Within this, how do we ensure that social media platforms become an important adjunct of our information warfare strategy? Do we need a directorate general of information warfare? Can we amalgamate some of our existing resources and ensure that social media becomes part and parcel of our life in the Army?” the chief wondered.

Screenshot of Gourav Kumar and Amita Amey's chat on Facebook Messenger.

Indian spymasters, too, are worried. “Within the intelligence agencies and now a few state police forces, dedicated social media cells have been set up, where each officer has to register any ID he creates on social media,” said an intelligence officer. “We put them under surveillance, where four to five people can easily keep tabs on 200 persons at a time. But this is not possible for the Army and some paramilitary forces like the CRPF where the numbers are so huge.”

The ISI is known to lure and recruit common people as spies, too. This May, the Uttar Pradesh ATS exposed a spy network with the arrest of Aftab Ali, a suspected ISI agent, from Faizabad. Aftab’s arrest led the ATS to Ramesh Singh, who allegedly had been bugging the house of an Indian diplomat in Islamabad since 2015.

Ramesh, who hails from Pithoragarh in Uttarakhand, worked as a cook at the Indian diplomat’s house in Islamabad. There, he made friends with a few janitors, and one of them, possibly an ISI agent, “made an offer to Ramesh of seeing a woman,” said an investigator. “Ramesh, love-lorn in the foreign land, fell for it, and had some good time with a woman.” The act was recorded in secret, and soon Ramesh started getting blackmail calls. Scared, he agreed to pass on information from his boss’s office and home. The ISI paid him in dollars, which he converted to rupees when he came home on leave. The ATS found that he had received about Rs8 lakh till September 2017, when he returned to India for good. The ISI continued to keep him on its payroll and gave him a QMobile (Pakistani brand), which had malware on it. He had three SIM cards on him, including one from Pakistan.

Aftab had been in touch with one Meherban Ali, too, who was posted in the Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi. Meherban was quietly sent back to Pakistan in 2016 on charges of spying. Pakistan has lured vulnerable Indian diplomats, too—the most notorious case being that of Madhuri Gupta. Gupta, a single woman, was working as second secretary (press and information) in the Indian High Commission in Islamabad. She was netted by the ISI through a Pakistani journalist. As soon as the R&AW got enough evidence to nab her, she was called back to India and arrested in 2012. A Delhi court sentenced her to three years imprisonment.

Two years ago, India expelled Mehmood Akhtar, who worked in the Pakistan High Commission’s visa section, after he was caught trying to rope in a travel and passport agent from Jodhpur to find people willing to spy in the border districts.

Even those aspiring to join the Army have been targeted. Take, for instance, Gourav Kumar, a young Army aspirant from Ganaur, Haryana. He met Amita Amey on Facebook and soon became friends with the charming “Indian student studying journalism in Italy”. Last December, he received a hello from her on Facebook Messenger. He sent back a request for video chat, but she did not respond. He tried again and again. She finally sent a text on Messenger. He asked: “Are you busy?” “No, talk to me. But do not video call me right now. Call me on WhatsApp,” she wrote back. “Call me fast.”

Three days later, Amita was keen to talk to Gourav. “Hey sweetheart. Where did you vanish?” she wrote on Messenger. Gourav told her he was at home and again tried to make video calls. But Amita preferred voice call on WhatsApp. The desire to see her pretty face almost killed him. To impress her, he sent her a picture of Indian soldiers sitting atop a tank in a desert. It was easy for him, being the son of an ex-serviceman. That did impress Amita. “Where are you in the picture?” she asked. “I’m on the tank... towards the right,” he said. “You are my life,” she replied.

The next day, Amita told him she had been thinking about him and started inquiring about his regiment. “Are you in Sikh or armoured regiment?” she asked. Gourav said he was in the Sikh regiment. The bright girl then asked him what he was doing on top of a tank. He said the exercise was on the tank. Amita wanted to know more. When would the next exercise be? Where? The name of his company? Was it Charlie? Which other units were attending the exercise? Gourav kept replying, and Amita promised to get close to him at night for all the answers he was giving.

Gourav allegedly sent her photos of military areas, signboards, names of units stationed there and the location. He was arrested on April 15 under the Official Secrets Act and the Indian Penal Code. When the police came calling, he tried to smash his phone on the floor. But the police recovered it and salvaged the information contained in it. The sleuths probed the IP addresses and found that Amita was not in Italy, but in Pakistan.

“This case is an eyeopener for security force personnel as well as youngsters who can get trapped using social media,” said Pankaj Nain, superintendent of police in Haryana, who handled the case. “Such interactions can not only lead a person to commit a crime, but also have serious national security ramifications.”

Gourav’s father, Jai Kishan, is inconsolable. His dream of seeing his son join the Army lies shattered. “He can never share any sensitive information with anyone,” said the former hawaldar who spent 26 years in service, with four stints in Jammu and Kashmir. “After all, he was not serving in the Army.”

Gourav’s lawyer Mohit Verma said there was no proof that Gourav was in touch with any ISI agent. “No arrest has been made of any ISI agent. Moreover, whatever Gourav shared is already in public domain,” he said.

Former home secretary G.K. Pillai said matrimonial and social media sites had opened up users to new threats. “Hostile intelligence agencies regularly operate these sites, looking for vulnerable and gullible victims who unwittingly disclose operational and other secure information,” he said. When Pillai was in the home ministry, he noticed that every two months the office computers would be compromised. This was because those working late into the night would visit porn sites and chat windows that brought malware into the systems. The government had then framed 32 do’s and don’ts for people who use the internet in office. “These apply to all vulnerable sectors,” said Pillai. “There is a need to follow standard operating procedures without any exceptions. In case of any alleged violation, even inadvertently, it is necessary to alert the system managers so that the lapse is plugged at the earliest.”

The WEEK checked with the armed forces about their policy, but they were reluctant to give it out.



“We do not want the enemy to know our do’s and don’ts,” said an IAF officer in charge of social media policy. “Rest assured, we have adequate checks and balances in place, which is why these cases have been exposed.”