PUNE — The Pune city crime branch police arrested a former army man who was working as an agent of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence.
Shailesh Ananatrao Jadhav, a resident of Kenjal village in neighboring Satara district, was nabbed for his alleged links with the ISI and is suspected to have contacts with convicted ISI agent Sayeed Desai who escaped from Saharkarnagar police custody a month ago. Acting on a tip-off, three police teams, led by Anti-Extortion Cell Inspector Bhanu Pratap Barge nabbed Jadhav at Pune Railway Station and seized classified documents containing sensitive information about defense establishments from him.
According to police, Jadhav was about to board a train for another city where he was going to share the confidential documents with Sayeed Desai, who, according to police, escaped from custody on Jan. 24.
Addressing a late night press conference, Additional Commissioner of Police Rajendra Singh said, “We nabbed Jadhav near the exit gate of the railway station. Confidential documents and three mobile phones were seized from him. Police also found print outs of e-mails sent by Jadhav to his handlers in Pakistan and some cash, which Jadhav admitted he was going to hand over to Sayeed Desai,” Singh said.
Investigations revealed Sayeed Desai had been in regular contact with an ISI officer in Pakistan named Tayyab. After escaping from custody Desai stayed at Jadhav’s house where he shaved his beard and went to Belgaum in Karnataka state and then to Hyderabad in Andhra Pradesh.
Jadhav, Singh said, had served eight years in Indian Army before his court marital in 2004 in a case of misappropriation during his posting in Jodhpur in 2002. He was sentenced to two years imprisonment and it was during his jail term in Yerawada Central Prison in Pune that he met Desai. “Jadhav has given some information about Desai’s whereabouts during interrogations. We would be arresting Desai soon, “Singh said.
Jadhav was booked under the Official Secrets Act and produced before a magistrate who remanded him to police custody till Feb. 24.
Meanwhile, the police are planning preventive steps and have suggested to the jail authorities to keep the accused/convicts under the Official Secrets Act in separate cells. “We have suggested to the jail authorities to create separate cells where high risk prisoners can be kept in isolation. This would prevent ISI agents from coming into contact with convicted defense personnel and cultivating them to work for the ISI,” said Inspector Barge.
