Spy racket busted; BSF man, ISI agent held

Shaurya Karanbir Gurung

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, November 29

The Delhi Police today busted an espionage racket by arresting a serving BSF man and a suspected ISI operative from whom classified documents having implications on national security were recovered.

Kafaitullah Khan, alias Master Raja (44), a resident of Kalai village in Rajouri district of Jammu and Kashmir, is allegedly a handler of Pakistan Intelligence Operative (PIO) and head constable Abdul Rasheed is a dispatch rider with the BSF G Branch (intelligence wing) at Rajouri. Both are reportedly distant cousins.

“Khan has contacts in different security agencies through which he was procuring secret information, detrimental to the security of the country,” said Ravindra Yadav, Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime Branch). While Khan was arrested from the New Delhi railway station on November 27, Rasheed was arrested from Jammu today.

Yadav said Khan also had “sources” in the Indian Army and Indian Air Force.

Sources said Khan was enrolled in the BSF in September, 1989, but didn’t join the force. He joined the Jammu and Kashmir Police in 1990 but resigned after nine months. “He became an Over Ground Worker for the militants in the 1990s. The police had apprehended him several times but he could not be booked for want of evidence,” a source said.

“Rasheed is one of the main sources of Khan. Both of them have been arrested under the provisions of the Official Secrets Act,” Yadav said. 

Sources in the BSF said the Delhi Police had contacted them regarding Rasheed around three days ago. “Upon interrogating Rasheed, we found that prima facie what the police said was true. He was giving information mostly about the units and locations of the army and the BSF. So we handed him to the police,” a source said.

An FIR (a copy is with The Tribune) in this regard was registered by the Crime Branch on November 16. The FIR reads that a secret informer informed the Crime Branch about anti-national activities supported by Pakistan-based intelligence operatives. “As per the information, the PIO (ISI agent) is having an Indian handler who is collecting information regarding the deployment of army and BSF in Jammu and Kashmir and passing it across the border, which can be hugely detrimental to national security,” the FIR read.

The FIR mentions that the handler is believed to have a pan-India network of informers. “Rasheed is passing secret information (about army, BSF, Air Force) to Khan in lieu of money and Khan is forwarding it to the PIO. The information contained can be directly or indirectly used by the enemy country,” the FIR said.

On November 26, Khan had reportedly boarded a train to Bhopal from Jammu. He was apprehended from Delhi on November 27 and few documents having implications on national security were allegedly recovered from him.

Khan had told the police that he was working as a library assistant at Higher Secondary School, Manjakote. “In 2013, he had visited Pakistan. During his stay there, he came in contact with an ISI agent and in lieu of monetary considerations agreed to provide secret information about defence forces,” Yadav said.