Vijay Mohan

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, September 8

Following communication intercepts, the Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF) have sounded an alert over a person, believed to be a foreign intelligence agent, posing an a Major in the Army and calling up CAPF establishments and eliciting sensitive information.

“It is learnt that an ISI agent impersonating as an Army officer called up a control room in a Shashtra Seema Bal (SSB) establishment and has been able to obtain certain sensitive information,” a signal received by SSB units this week states. The SSB is responsible for the peace-time management of the Indo-Nepal and Indo-Bhutan borders. India and Nepal share an open border of 1,751 km, where the main challenge is to check misuse of the open border by terrorists and criminals for illegal and anti-national activities. Pakistan’s ISI has a large presence in Nepal and is known to stage operations against India from the Himalayan kingdom.

Asking all unit commanders to urgently sensitise personnel manning control rooms and telephones against sharing any information with unidentified or unauthorised persons without approval from the competent authority, the signal states that disciplinary action should be initiated against personnel involved in such security breaches.

Calling up security establishments while posing as Indian officers to elicit information has been a long-standing ploy of Pakistani operatives due to similar phonetics and accents. Last year, a stenographer posted in UP was arrested on the charge of espionage after it emerged he was passing details of correspondence between civilian and military authorities on matters such as clearance for field firing ranges, names or officers and units etc, to his handlers.

In March 2017, the MoS (Home) said in Parliament that in 2016-17, 33 persons were arrested for spying for Pakistan, highest from Rajasthan, followed by Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir.