- Saturday, March 01, 2025
By: Shubham Ghosh
India’s Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) has removed a senior scientist from the post of laboratory director for allegedly leaking sensitive information to Pakistani operatives.
The scientist, Pradeep Kurulkar, has been accused of committing the act weeks before his arrest on Thursday (4) by the police in Pune in the western state of Maharashtra. He reportedly leaked sensitive information online to foreign agents who had honey-trapped him through a female colleague.
“The scientist had been removed as the laboratory director after our probe found that he indulged in leaking sensitive information,” officials at DRDO were quoted as saying by India Today.
DRDO, which is the research and development wing of India’s defence ministry and aims at empowering the country with cutting-edge defence technologies and helping it achieve self-reliance in critical defence technologies and systems, had launched an investigation against Kurulkar after receiving inputs from agencies about his suspicious activities online, the officials added.
They said the scientist had been attached to some office and action was already taken against him, the officials added.
The officials said the agency was still carrying out a probe into the issue and sensitising its officials against indulging in any such act on social media.
According to the Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS), Kurulkar was found to have had connection with operatives of Pakistani intelligence agents through social media, the India Today report added.
The woman agent of a “Pakistani Intelligence Operative” contacted the accused through WhatsApp in September 2022, and since then they were in contact through WhatsApp voice messages and video calls, an ATS official said.
During interrogation, Kurulkar admitted that he had video chats with the woman, the ATS official added.
The accused’s two mobile phones and other electronic gadgets which were used for communicating with the woman agent were seized and sent for forensic analysis, he said.
“The scientist, by misusing his position, despite knowing that the official secrets in his possession if obtained by the enemy country can pose a threat to the security of the country, provided the details to the enemy country,” the ATS had said in a release on Thursday.
The arrested scientist was produced before a special judge in Pune and sent to ATS custody until Tuesday (9).
(With PTI inputs)
