BALASORE: A Balasore court on Thursday dropped charges of espionage slapped against five contractual employees of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), Chandipur due to lack of supporting documents.
The court of Additional District Judge (ADJ)-3 Bibhasat Goutam removed the charges under sections 3, 4 and 5 of the Official Secrets Act against accused Basanta Behera, Hemanta Mistri, Sachin Kumar, Tapas Ranjan Nayak and Sk Musafir since prosecution could not furnish the necessary documents. All the five were from Jhamparahat and Nuanai in Balasore district.
Hemanta's lawyer Goura Prasad Behera told The New Indian Express that the court had asked the Government of India through the public prosecutor (PP) to submit necessary documents to support the charges slapped by police on the accused. Though six months passed, the PP could not submit the documents.
Behera had then filed a petition in the court in this regard. Hearing the petition, court dropped the charges under the sections of Official Secret Act against the accused. The five employees were arrested by police in September last year for allegedly leaking classified defence secrets to foreign agents.
Sachin worked as a driver in the DRDO while Basanta and Sk Musafir were AC operators, Hemanta a diesel gen-set operator and Tapas an employee at the Integrated Test Range (ITR) main gate. Acting on intelligence inputs, a special team of Odisha police had arrested Basanta, Sachin, Tapas and Musafir on September 14 2021.
Hemanta was apprehended the next day. Preliminary investigations revealed that the contractual employees were allegedly honey-trapped for information on activities at the test facility.
They allegedly had links with a woman in Pakistan who was said to be an ISI agent. The woman, according to police, contacted them on social media. The five were allegedly paid huge amounts in exchange of leaking DRDO's data.
A case under sections 120-B/121-A/34 of IPC-R/W and sections 3, 4 and 5 of the Official Secrets Act was registered against the accused by Balasore police. Later, the case was handed over to the Crime Branch.