This article is also posted on SatyaVijayi
On a day when the body of a BSF soldier was found mutilated at the border, another BSF soldier, miles away from the border, was nabbed for passing over sensitive information to the Pakistani spy agency, ISI, in a Mossad like operation executed by Military intel unit, Chandigarh and UP ATS.
AN Mishra, BSF soldier nabbed for spying
Pakistan’s Army is cognizant that it can never achieve parity with Indian Army on conventional terms, so it often resorts to unconventional methods to wage a war against us, and espionage agents within the country become ISI’s rich ammunition against India.
Earlier this year, Military intel unit (Chandigarh) had tipped off UP ATS about a fake social media profile from across the border, which was contacting myriad Indian defence personnel online, through different social media platforms like Facebook. One of the ID with which the fake ID from Pakistan had plethora of communication, belonged to Achutanand Mishra, a BSF jawan. The soldier had been been surreptitiously sharing very sensitive data with his online friend, whose name was saved as Pakistani dost on his WhatsApp.
The “cornucopia” of information that ISI had been receiving from the defected soldier is shocking:
Any soldier who joins Indian defence forces is bound by India’s anti espionage (“Spy” and “Secret agent”) act called the official secret act of 1923; according to this Act, helping the enemy state in the form of communicating a sketch, plan, model of an official secret, or of official codes or passwords, to the enemy is punishable by law. AN Mishra had clearly violated the act and had done so willingly; through his chats its now known that he had strictly instructed the ISI agent to “delete pictures and videos from the mobile, once shared”.
In the first year of his “courtship” with the ISI agent, AN Mishra had worked assiduously as Pakistan’s espionage agent, by the second year he had voluntarily submitted to the demand of converting his religion to Islam. His motivation behind assisting the enemy spy agency is being ascertained, albeit, over a period of time he had created 5 bank accounts, pecuniary benefits could have been a motive.
While he had been compromising Indian assets with his unbridled enthusiasm to the enemy, he had come under the scanner of Military intelligence agency, Chandigarh. On Indian agency’s part, it took months of exhaustive tracking and whittling down of lists to zero down upon this soldier. They had to tread carefully to trap him in their net by working on his weaknesses, it was finally a “counter” honey-trap (if it can be called so) that lead to AN Mishra’s arrest.
AN Mishra is a textbook example of an espionage agent, who displayed professional vulnerability; he had many red ink entries in his profile, and had on many occasions over stayed while on leave, for which he had been punished at least 4 times. But Mishra is just one out of many assets that ISI has in India.
It is such circumstances that entail anti-terror agency like the proposed NCTC (National Counter Terrorism Centre), which would be a formal portal for amalgamation of different intelligence agencies in India, and which would facilitate intaking actions based on real time intelligence inputs.
Alas! The proposal was met with vehement opposition by Chief Ministers of various states, who had a trepidation that NCTC will be a threat to India’s federalism. Fortunately, Modi government has so far been very proactive when it comes to security issues, along with the UP state government, headed by Yogi Adityanath.
This operation has also brought to fore, the beast, which has so far been lurking in the shadow while shouldering the burden of allaying security threats in the country –the military intelligence Unit of Indian Army. It’s a panacea for security threats when agencies like ATS and MI come together to bring down enemy’s ploy to subvert India.
This article is written by Levina in collaboration with Shatrujeet