LUCKNOW: Suspected ISI agent Ramesh Singh Kanyal, arrested from Didihat tehsil Pithoragarh in Uttarakhand, has disclosed to the UP ATS team that Pakistan’s intelligence agency had wooed him by laying a honey trap while his stint as a cook at the house of an India defence attaché at India High Commission in Islamabad.
Kanyal, who is in the transit remand and being interrogated by the UP ATS sleuths in Lucknow, claimed that he was bullied by ISI men who told him that diplomat’s house was under direct surveillance and that agency’s men were all around his residence.
Kanyal was arrested by UP ATS in coordination with military intelligence unit and Uttarakhand police from Pithoragarh on Wednesday.
Kanyal confessed to his interrogators that he got into the ISI trap despite being warned by the diplomat whom he was working with. “He had cautioned me a number of times about the presence of ISI sleuths all around his residence. He had also warned me of their possible attempt to trap me in order to extract classified information through me,” Kanyal revealed to the ATS team quizzing him.
Kanyal, who was with the diplomat in Islamabad for little over two years from 2015 to 2017, allegedly revealed that primarily he kept a safe distance with ISI but they kept approaching him through different channels and finally laid a honey trap to get him to listen to them.
As per the sources in ATS, very often the suspect used to get escort services in Islamabad facilitated by the ISI men. Those escorts used to visit him at the residence in the absence of Indian diplomat. They helped Kanyal to get the entire residence bugged to pass on sensitive information to the intelligence agency.
He also admitted to having received a hefty sum in dollars for sharing information from diplomat's house to the ISI handlers.