Ex-BrahMos engineer’s life sentence cut to 3 years by Bombay High Court

The Nagpur bench of Bombay High Court has reduced the punishment of former BrahMos Aerospace engineer Nishant Agrawal, bringing his earlier life imprisonment down to a three-year jail term, as per reports. The court overturned the trial court’s decision, which had awarded him a long sentence under the Official Secrets Act for alleged espionage activities.

Agrawal was arrested in 2018 after a joint investigation by the Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra ATS teams, assisted by Military Intelligence, uncovered that Pakistan-based ISI handlers had contacted him through fake social media accounts under the identities Neha Sharma, Pooja Ranjan, and Sejal Kapoor. Investigators alleged he was honey-trapped and induced into sharing sensitive data related to India’s BrahMos missile systems.

Before his arrest, Agrawal worked as a senior systems engineer at BrahMos Aerospace in Nagpur, a joint venture between the DRDO and Russia’s Military Industrial Consortium. He was part of the teams developing India’s supersonic cruise missile capable of being launched from land, air, sea, and underwater.

A sessions court had earlier sentenced him to 14 years in jail for leaking confidential defence information and imposed a fine of ₹3,000. His laptop was found to contain classified material and software capable of transferring restricted files to foreign entities, according to investigators.

Agrawal, an NIT Kurukshetra alumnus and recipient of the DRDO’s Young Scientist Award, was granted bail by the Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court in April 2023. The recent ruling further reduces his punishment to a three-year term, significantly altering the outcome of the high-profile espionage case.

(With inputs from syndicated feed)