The Nagpur Bench of the Bombay High Court on Friday rejected the application of former BrahMos Aerospace engineer Nishant Agrawal for suspension of his sentence and potential bail. The Division Bench, comprising Justice Vinay Joshi and Justice Vrushali Joshi, turned down the application two days after closing the case for final arguments, said Assistant Government Pleader Anup Badar, who represented the State in the case. According to AGP Badar, the court observed that prima facie, there was no substance in the appeal.

 

The court also focused on the undertaking Agrawal had given upon joining BrahMos Aerospace, wherein he committed not to share or access sensitive data. However, Agrawal not only accessed the data but also shared it with enemy countries, AGP Badar said. According to the prosecution, Agrawal had copied 19 confidential files from the BrahMos facility, with file number 11 being classified as top secret and related to the seeker component of the missiles. Knowing about the seeker component would enable an enemy country to develop related components and defend against missile attacks. Agrawal was sentenced to life imprisonment by Additional Sessions Judge-1 M V Deshpande for espionage on behalf of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) on June 3 this year. He was arrested in 2018 in Nagpur on charges of leaking information about the BrahMos missile to the ISI. At the time, he was a senior systems engineer at BrahMos Aerospace, a joint venture between DRDO and Russia’s Military Industrial Consortium (NPO Mashinostroyenia), which focuses on India’s supersonic cruise missile capable of being launched from land, air, sea, and underwater platforms. After copying the files from the computers, Agrawal stored them on a laptop, which was later seized from his residence. Adv Badar informed the court that during searches, the police had seized a laptop, a pendrive, a Nokia phone, and hard disks. The prosecution has also recorded statements from senior officials, including the Chief General Manager of HR (Retd) and the former Director of BrahMos, Hyderabad. Agrawal was in contact with a Facebook account under the name Shejal Kapoor. The police have obtained the IP address of this account and phone numbers associated with it. The account was created in Pakistan and operated by an ISI spy. Senior Adv Siddhartha Dave represented Agrawal. 

 

‘No denial from Agrawal on access to restricted files’ AGP Badar claimed that Agrawal’s counsel had not denied that Agrawal accessed the restricted files from the BrahMos facility. As a result, Agrawal’s guilt was established. The Cyber Forensic Lab report also indicated the possibility of sensitive information being shared by Agrawal with enemies through social networking sites, claimed AGP Badar.