PUNE, 11 April 2007 — The Anti Extortion Cell of Pune police arrested a suspected Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agent here on Monday in a raid on a lodge in the Deccan Gymkhana locality of the city. The raid followed intelligence provided by the federal intelligence agencies, sources said.
According to police, the alleged ISI agent Vishal Kumar Premshankar Upadhaya, a 24-year-old engineering student at a local college from Jharkhand state, was arrested under the Official Secret Acts. The accused was brought before a magistrate who remanded him in police custody until April 17.
During police interrogation, Upadhaya confessed that the ISI had plans to undertake terrorist attacks on temples, the local office of the Hindu militant organization Rashtriya Swamsewak Sangh (RSS) in the heart of the city, vital defense establishments, and the ammunition factory situated in Khadki and Dehu Road cantonments.
During a search of the suspect’s residence, police recovered 12 compact discs containing photographs of army units and Hindu religious places. Police say that two of the CDs contained information regarding defense establishments and religious places in the city, and also 50 photographs of army units under the Southern Command Headquarters in Pune.
Checking Upadhaya’s Indian passport, it was found that he had a Pakistani visa, and a receipt of Indian Rupees 30,000 received from Pakistan through Western Union. The police also recovered a cell phone, a sim card, a digital camera, a photograph of a Pakistani woman identified as Fatima, telephone numbers of high ranking army officers, two diaries, including one in Urdu, containing addresses of Pakistani citizens.
Upadhaya told the interrogators that his ISI handlers had asked him to put the army establishments, the Bombay Sappers at Khadki and the airport on the hit list. Upadhaya, it is said, had fallen into the ISI trap after falling in love with a Pakistani girl, who he met in an Internet chatroom two years ago. The two are said to regularly chat. A senior official of the Anti Extortion Cell in his remand application to the court alleged that Upadhaya had twice visited Karachi.
The public prosecutor told the court that the police wanted prolonged custody of the accused to find out how he had procured the CDs and the photographs of defense buildings and Hindu religious places.
They further informed the court that during the police search, police recovered two white envelopes sent by Salahuddin Shah of Rashid Minhas Road in Karachi. The court was also informed that the accused had torn off a page from his Indian passport, which had a Pakistani visa on it, and that the accused had used a sim card to make calls to Pakistan.
Meanwhile, the city police Commissioner Jayant Umranikar, himself a former high ranking official of India’s premier spy agency Research and Analysis wing (RAW), and who had served in the Indian mission in Pakistan, refused to divulge the outcome of the investigations and blamed the media for hampering the case by disclosing the name of the accused in public.
The city police chief late on Monday held a meeting with top army officers and apprised them of the possible security threats to the military establishments. Umranikar also said that the army was aware of the ISI sabotage plan.
Police sources said that the city police’s exuberance in revealing to the media the arrest of Upadhaya have allowed three other suspects in the case to get away. “The damage may have already been done, said a police official, explaining that it takes long and sustained effort for the investigating agencies to track and crack such cases.”
