New Delhi: The National Investigation Agency has filed a chargesheet against a Central Reserve Police Force personnel dismissed from service on charges of leaking sensitive information to Pakistani intelligence operatives for money, invoking, among others the stringent Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.
Moti Ram Jat was arrested by the counterterror agency after the CRPF had allegedly found evidence in his phone suggesting he was in communication with suspicious accounts. He was promptly dismissed from service before the force handed him to the NIA.
The chargesheet was filed Friday at Delhi’s Patiala House Court.
“A chargesheet with details of the financial transactions as well as data extracted from his mobile phone has been filed before the court. The investigation will continue to unravel the entire module of the PIOs (Pakistani intelligence operatives) extracting information from security persons either through allurement or through entrapments,” a source aware of the matter told ThePrint.
The agency has invoked sections 61 (criminal conspiracy), 147 (waging, attempting to wage, or abetting war against the Government of India), 148 (conspiracy to commit offences covered under section 147), and 152 (acts endangering the sovereignty, unity, and integrity of India) of the Bharatiya Nyay Sanhita, 2023.
The Official Secret Acts, 1923 and the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967, have also been invoked in the chargesheet, sources further said.
A resident of Haryana, Moti Ram was posted as an assistant sub-inspector with the 116th battalion of the paramilitary force, which was deployed in Pahalgam. He was transferred on 17 April, just five days before terrorists struck at the tourist spot, killing 26 people, including a Nepalese citizen, bringing India and Pakistan perilously close to a full-blown war.
CRPF officers confronted Moti Ram regarding his suspicious social media activities, which allegedly revealed he had shared senstitive information related to movement of troops and deployment in Jammu and Kashmir. He was immediately dismissed from the service and handed over to the counterterrorism agency, which arrested him on 21 May.
“He was taken into custody for indulging in espionage activity in passing sensitive info about intelligence inputs regarding operations conducted by security forces, location of security installations to Pakistani intelligence operatives in exchange for money,” the source said.
A preliminary probe by the force and the agency had revealed that Moti Ram was allegedly receiving Rs 3,000 per month from a foreign bank account into his wife’s bank account.
After his arrest, the NIA had revealed that Moti Ram was “actively involved” in espionage activity since 2023 and that he was receiving funds from the PIOs through various India-based conduits.
Days after taking Moti Ram into custody and questioning over the web of PIOs, the NIA had carried out raids at 15 locations across Delhi, Mumbai, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Assam and West Bengal.
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