India has been bolstering its nuclear posture by inducting a nuclear-powered attack submarine in its fleet. By 2025, the Indian Navy will have three atomic submarines with a strike range covering the entire Pakistan and a significant portion of China.
Since the submarine-launched ballistic missile first appeared, it has been considered the most survivable delivery system, as ocean depths remain opaque.
A nuclear-powered attack submarine or SSBN guarantees survivability of nuclear retaliatory capability. With its long coastlines and peninsula, the SSBNs can remain hidden in ocean depths during the conflict to ensure the survival of second-strike capability.
The importance of India operationalizing its nuclear triad has got Pakistan interested, which in 2021 laid down a pan-India espionage project to snoop into the capabilities of one of the deadliest platforms of the Indian Navy.
The espionage ring is so extensive that the National Investigation Agency, India’s specialized counter-terrorism law enforcement agency, is still unraveling the network nodes even in 2024. On August 29, raids were conducted at 16 locations in seven states in relation to the spy case conducted by operatives with connections to Pakistan’s intelligence agency, ISI.
The raids took place in Gujarat, Karnataka, Kerala, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and Haryana in premises linked to the accused suspected to have received funding from the ISI and its operatives in exchange for sensitive and confidential defense information related to the Indian Navy.
The NIA is empowered to investigate terror-related crimes across states without special permission from the states under a written proclamation from the Ministry of Home Affairs.
The espionage network was unearthed after the Counter Intelligence Cell of the Andhra Pradesh Police registered a case against one Deepak from Haryana on January 12, 2021.
He was accused of transferring money to individuals in the port city of Visakhapatnam in exchange for confidential information. So far, three suspects have been arrested in the case, three chargesheets have been filed against them, and two alleged ISI-linked operatives who collected classified information about the Indian Navy.
Visakhapatnam is on India’s eastern seaboard. Besides being an important naval base, the three nuclear-powered attack submarines INS Arihant, INS Arighaat, and INS Aridaman (under construction) have been built at the Indian Navy’s Ship Building Centre (SBC).
The project has been shrouded in secrecy, with only one official photograph of INS Arihant being released. Most of the information about the submarines has been gleaned from satellite photos.
During the raids the NIA took two contract workers at Cochin Shipyard Limited (CSL) in custody. CSL is where India’s indigenous aircraft carrier was constructed.
“A total of 22 mobile phones and a host of sensitive documents were seized during the searches conducted by NIA, which had, in July 2023, taken over the instant case, originally registered in January 2021 by the Counter Intelligence Cell, Andhra Pradesh. The case involved leakage of sensitive vital information about the Indian Navy as part of an anti-India conspiracy hatched from across the border,” the NIA stated.
NIA filed a chargesheet against two accused, including an absconding Pakistani national, Meer Balaj Khan, on July 19, 2023. Investigations revealed that Meer Balaj Khan, along with an arrested accused, Akash Solanki, had been involved in the espionage racket.
On November 6, 2023, the NIA filed a supplementary chargesheet against two other accused persons, identified as Manmohan Surendra Panda and Alven. While Panda has been arrested, Alven, a Pakistani Intelligence Operative, is absconding. In May 2024, NIA filed its second supplementary chargesheet against one accused, Amaan Salim Shaikh, for conspiring with Pakistan Intelligence Operatives.
Pakistan Keen To Decode BrahMos
The BrahMos is one of the world’s few cruise missiles capable of flying at high supersonic speeds. The speed makes it incredibly difficult to engage or avoid the BrahMos missile.
Pakistan has doubled its intelligence efforts to unravel the missile.
In 2023, a Pakistani spy posed as Zara Dasgupta, ‘ honey-trapped’ senior Indian scientist Pradeep Kurulkar, and spoke extensively about BrahMos—‘the dangerous one.’
Kurulkar, the 59-year-old head of DRDO’s Research and Development Establishment (Engineers) or R&D (E) laboratory, was arrested on May 3, 2023, by the Maharashtra ATS under sections of the Official Secrets Act (OSA) related to spying and wrongful communication with the female Pakistan Intelligence Operative (PIO).
From October 19 to October 28, 2022, the two individuals discussed BrahMos. In one exchange, Zara asked, “Brahmos was also your invention, babe… the dangerous one.”
“I have an initial design report of some 186 A4 size pages on all BrahMos versions,” Kurulkar replied. Later, Kurulkar allegedly told her, “I cannot send a copy of that report to WA or mail. It is highly classified… I will trace and keep it ready when you are here. Will try and show you here,” Kulkarni added.
As stated in the chargesheet, BrahMos, Kurulkar, and Zara had WhatsApp chats on “Agni 6, Rustom (a medium-altitude long-endurance unmanned air vehicle), Surface-to-Air Missiles (SAM), Unmanned Combat Air Vehicles (UCAV), Drone projects” of DRDO.
It also includes chats on “Quadcopter, DRDO duty chart, Meteor missile, Rafael, Akash, and Astra missile.” It refers to a private Indian defense company executive, a DRDO vendor, making “robotic equipment” for Indian forces.
A 27-year-old BrahMos Aerospace Engineer, Nishant Agarwal, was arrested under a joint operation by Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra for giving technical information to a Pakistan operative. He was in touch with suspected Pakistan intelligence operatives, operating under false names “Neha Sharma” and “Pooja Ranjan.”
The police later said that despite the highly sensitive nature of his job, he made himself an easy target on the internet.
In 2020, a probe launched into an espionage case in the Indian Navy opened a pandora’s box. Thirteen Indian navy personnel were arrested from different naval bases and were accused of leaking sensitive information to Pakistani spies. The intelligence operatives had befriended them through social media profiles.
