A senior Indian defense official has been arrested on suspicion of leaking sensitive information about the country’s nuclear-capable ballistic missiles to an alleged Pakistani female spy. The official is accused of meeting the Pakistani spy on a social networking platform and passing on sensitive information to her.
According to Indian media reports, Mallikarjuna Reddy is the name of the arrested individual. He had been working in the Advanced Naval System Program at the Defence Research and Development Laboratory (DRDL) in Hyderabad since 2018.
In an official statement, the Hyderabad Police said that they had received a complaint from the DRDL (Defence Research and Development Laboratory) claiming that Mallikarjuna had disclosed sensitive information about India’s nuclear ballistic missiles to an alleged female spy of Pakistan.
Acting on the complaint, the Hyderabad Police arrested Mallikarjuna from his home. The police also seized mobile phones, laptops, and official paperwork from his residence.
During the preliminary investigation, Mallikarjuna revealed that a woman befriended him on Facebook a couple of months ago. She promised to marry him in exchange for the details about Agni and K-series missiles.
Mallikarjuna disclosed that he shared the details about the K-4 missile with an effective range of 3,500 km, K-5 with a 6,000 km range, and K-15 with a 1,500 km range. He said that he was able to get highly sensitive information so easily because his job duties also included visits to different defense manufacturing facilities all over the country to review the progress of various projects.
