Madhya Pradesh anti-terror squad (ATS) on Thursday arrested five persons in Satna district on the charge of helping Pakistani secret intelligence agency ISI in terror funding through Chinese Box-enabled espionage.

Interestingly, one of the individuals was arrested by the same agency about two-and-a-half years back, in connection with a similar spy racket.

The accused have been identified as Balram Singh, Sunil Singh, Bhagvendra Singh, Shubham Tiwari and one more.

The police said all of the men were allegedly used by the ISI to transfer money parked in the accounts of Indian nationals for various subversive operations directed against India.

According to the police, the Pakistani handlers used Chinese Sim box - enabled fake telephone exchanges to cheat Indian citizens through various frauds including phone lottery. The money thus procured would be deposited in bank accounts of Indian nationals on a monthly rent ranging anything between Rs 2,000 to Rs 5,000.These Indian nationals are said to be stationed in Bihar, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh.

Balram Singh, the alleged kingpin of the terror-funding racket, was arrested by the MP Anti-terrorist Squad (ATS) along with Madhya Pradesh BJP’s then IT cell coordinator Dhruv Saxena in February 2017. After being released on bail, Balram resumed his anti-India activity at the behest of ISI handlers.

At the time, Balram was accused of managing accounts and had allegedly transferred money to two Pakistani spies, Satvender and Dadu, who were arrested by the Jammu and Kashmir police in November 2016.

Satvinder and Dadu were hired by the ISI for passing on information about movements of Indian troops and locations of Indian Army camps and bridges. Another accused, Bhagvendra, had also been arrested by the ATS in Indore in the past.

Of the five accused arrested in Satna, three have been handed over to the Madhya Pradesh ATS, while the remaining two are still being questioned by the Satna police.

The Satna police detained them after getting a tip-off about the fake telephone exchange being operated. The police discovered that all of them had telephone numbers of Pakistani nationals and were in constant touch with at least 15 Pakistan numbers through WhatsApp chat and calls.