Ghaziabad: The Ghaziabad police arrested four men and detained five juveniles on Friday for allegedly being a part of a cross-border espionage network.
They were engaged in filming military establishments, railway stations and other sensitive installations across the country and transmitted photographs, videos and GPS coordinates to foreign handlers, officials said.
The main accused – identified as Naushad Ali, a resident of Bihar’s Muzaffarpur, and Sameer alias Shooter from Bhagalpur – are at large, the police said.
Suhail Malik, identified as the alleged key handler of the gang, was arrested earlier.
“The accused arrested on Friday were identified as Ganesh (20) from Nepal’s Gulmi district; Vivek (18) from Bihar’s Purnia; Gagan Kumar Prajapati (22) from Uttar Pradesh’s Meerut; and Durgesh Nishad (26) who lives in Navi Mumbai but hails from Uttar Pradesh’s Jaunpur,” an official said, as reported by The Indian Express.
Raj Karan Nayyar, ACP, Ghaziabad, said that on March 14, officers at Kaushambi police station were informed that some people were sharing videos and photos of railway stations and other important locations with some foreign numbers, and that they were recruiting other youths for such jobs too.
“Six people were arrested. An SIT was formed. Names of 11 others emerged. Nine of them were held on Friday,” he said.
The police said the six accused arrested earlier included a woman and that footage and locations of sensitive locations were found on their phones.
The accused revealed that they were “assigned tasks” by people operating from other countries, the ACP said.
“They had set up some solar-powered CCTV cameras. Further investigation is underway,” he added.
Two of these CCTV cameras were secretly installed at Delhi Cantonment and Sonipat railway stations, and the accused shared the feed with handlers abroad in real time.
A case was registered under BNS sections 61(2) and 152 and sections 3 and 5 of the Official Secrets Act, police said.
The accused had installed a special application on their phones for transmission of GPS coordinates, and had been trained virtually by the foreign handlers, the police said.
The network was also engaged in another fraud. Members would share OTPs using Indian SIM cards – obtained through snatching, purchase from agents, or using ones registered in their own or family members’ names – enabling the foreign handlers to run WhatsApp accounts linked to Indian numbers, the police said.
The payment for each task ranged from Rs 500 to Rs 15,000, and was routed through UPI, but collected as cash from Jan Seva Kendras and shops, to make sure there is no financial trail.
“The network had planned to plant hidden cameras at 50 more locations across the country. Investigators are trying to identify these spots,” another official said.
