Conduit of ISI agent held in Bathinda

BATHINDA: The arrest of a Bathinda resident by the Rajasthan CID police on May 25 for his alleged involvement in spying on Indian military establishments in Bathinda, and further sending the strategic information to an ISI agent at Jaipur, has sent shockwaves among the military and police establishments here.
A CID police party from Rajasthan reportedly caught Om Parkash, a spy, from the Mehna Chowk locality, here, after one Ashgar Ali, an ISI agent, was arrested in Jaipur who revealed the names of the people working in cahoots with him to gather strategic information about the Indian Army from Hisar, Sri Ganganagar, Bikaner, Abohar, Fazilka, Chandigarh and Bathinda.
The six arrested members of the spying group include: kingpin Ashgar Ali from Jaipur, Om Parkash from Bathinda, Pappu Ram Balmiki from Hisar, Vajir Singh from Chandigarh, and Madan Lal and Raghubir Singh from the Lalgarh Cantonment area near Sri Ganganagar.
All the accused have been booked under the Official Secrets Act at Jaipur. While Ashgar Ali and Raghubir have been remanded to police custody, the other four accused were granted eight days remand on Monday by a Jaipur court.
According to police sources, Ashgar Ali was working as a nodal point and was sent vital information though email by Om Parkash, Pappu Ram, Bajir Singh and Madan Lal from Bathinda, Hisar, Chandigarh and Lalgarh, respectively. Sources revealed that Ashgar Ali was a pesticide dealer in the Punjab province of Pakistan and after his business failed, he came in contact with the ISI which pushed him into India after training him in spying.
In India, after staying for a brief period at Dehradun, Chandigarh and Delhi under fictitious names, he was directed to operate from Jaipur, where in the garb of a courier business and with a fake name, Vijay Sagar, he started looking for gullible people who could help him in spying for the ISI.
In October 2000, he came in contact with Om Parkash, whose father was a tailor in the Hisar Cantonment area. Ashgar lured Om Parkash by promising him a job in his courier company and later appointed him for collecting information of strategic importance.
Ashgar then established contacts with Pappu Ram,who was a class IV employee in the audit department in Hisar Cantonment. He also established links with Madan Lal, the nephew of Pappu and a generator operator with the MES in Lalgarh Cantonment. Through Pappu, Ashgar came in contact with Vajir Chand, a clerk in the defence audit department at Western Command, Chandimandir.
Sources said that the interrogation of the accused revealed that a number of persons who were working in private canteens and as contractors in cantonment areas were leaking vital and strategic information to Ashgar.Ashgar told the police during interrogation that he had received Rs 4 lakh for the job from Pakistan in the last two years.