Pakistani ‘spy’ caught in the nick of time

An onion exporter from Thanjavur, who had gathered sensitive details on vital defence and maritime installations in India for an ISI agent based in Colombo, was caught just before he boarded a flight to Sri Lanka from Tiruchy to hand over his digital dossier on Monday evening.

The Q branch police arrested A R Anzari alias Dhameem Anzari (35), originally from Adiramapattinam, a coastal village in Thanjavur district, under the Official Secrets Act, when he was on his way to the airport with CDs and pen drives containing many photographs and video recordings.

Anzari was introduced to Boss alias Ameer Subbiah Siddique — said to be the person in charge of the Tamil Nadu unit of ISI and working out of the Pakistan consulate in Colombo — in 2011 by a friend in Sri Lanka, to whom he had lamented about losses incurred in onion export. As Ameer promised a huge amount in return for security details in India, especially Tamil Nadu, Anzari returned to India and travelled across the nation, taking photos and videos of places like Defence Services Staff College at Wellington, ports in Vizag, Nagapattinam and Karaikal and coastal security arrangements.

Since Anzari’s attempts to despatch the details online failed, he decided to meet Ameer personally. But sleuths at the Q branch headquarters alerted their Tiruchy team and Anzari was nabbed. He was charged under Sections 3, 4 and 9 of the Official Secrets Act 1923 and Section 120 B of the IPC and produced before Judicial Magistrate Rajendran, who remanded him in judicial custody.