A sessions court in Ahmedabad awarded life term to three men for spying and leaking confidential information about India’s military bases to Pakistan’s spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).
Though the prosecution had sought death for the three, the court of the additional sessions judge, Ambalal Patel rejected the same saying the crime doesn’t fall under the “rarest of rare” category.
Excoriating the trio Sirajuddin Ali Fakir (24), Mohammad Ayub (23) and Naushad Ali (23) for their love and patriotism for Pakistan, despite having employment in India, the court said, a “person sitting in India and spying for Pakistan as a citizen of India should voluntarily leave the country or the government should search for them and send them to Pakistan”.
“They did not think about the security of 140 crores of India but their own interests and the interests of Pakistan,” the order said.
The court convicted the three on charges of criminal conspiracy and waging war against the country under the Indian Penal Code (IPC), Official Secrets Act, and the Information Technology Act in the 2012 case.
The trio was handed life imprisonment under sections 121, 121 (A) and 120 (B) of IPC and section 66 (F) of the IT Act, along with 14 years of rigorous imprisonment under section 3 of the Official Secrets Act, and 10 years jail under section 123 (Concealing with intent to facilitate design to wage war) of IPC. All the sentences will run concurrently.
“All the accused are citizens of India … they sent secret information about Indian Army movements to the ISI in Pakistan for three consecutive years and got lakhs of rupees from Dubai,” the court said.
The Ahmedabad crime branch had arrested Fakir and Ayub, residents of Jamalpur locality, on October 14, 2012, for allegedly passing on confidential information related to Army bases in Ahmedabad and the Gandhinagar Army Cantonment to the ISI.
Another accused, Naushad Ali of Jodhpur was picked up on November 2, 2012, on charges of providing information about the Jodhpur Army cantonment and BSF headquarters.
A suspected ISI agent based in Jamnagar was also arrested. However, he was acquitted in February 2013 under section 169 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) for want of evidence. He later turned approver in the case.
As per the chargesheet, Fakir, Ayub, and Ali saved messages in drafts to facilitate Pakistani officials accessing them using emails.
According to the prosecution, Fakir visited Pakistan in 2007 and met one Taimur. Ali met ISI agents in the neighbouring country in 2009.
The police had recovered the map of the Ahmedabad-based Army cantonment from Fakir’s residence.
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