The CBI has arrested Delhi-based freelance journalist Vivek Raghuvanshi and former navy commander Ashish Pathak in connection with alleged leak of sensitive information related to defence procurement to foreign intelligence agencies. Raghuvanshi had been on the radar of probe agencies since last September. The arrests came after CBI sleuths, who carried out searches at more than 15 locations in Delhi-NCR and Jaipur, stumbled upon foreign remittances to the tune of £300,000 in the bank accounts of Raghuvanshi and his family members, sources said.
Raghuvanshi is learnt to have claimed the money received was payment for the articles he wrote, but the agency was not satisfied with his answers, the sources said. CBI is now probing if there are others involved in the case. Raghuvanshi and Pathak have been booked under the Officials Secrets Act, besides IPC section 120-B (criminal conspiracy). The duo was produced in court and remanded in CBI custody.
During the raids, the agency seized 48 electronic devices, including laptops, tablets, mobile phones, hard disks and pen drives, belonging to the two accused, besides “incriminating documents” pertaining to the country’s defence establishments. “The data stored in cloud-based accounts, e-mails and social media accounts belonging to the accused and others have been recovered by digital forensic experts of CBI,” said an agency spokesperson. The scrutiny of data revealed that Raghuvanshi, who worked for a web portal named Defence News, was collecting confidential information related to defence procurement from different sources and had entered into agreements with several foreign entities for sharing the information.
Following his arrest, Raghuvanshi revealed the alleged role of Pathak in supplying the classified information to him. The agency has stumbled upon incriminating communication between the two accused.
The sleuths are also looking into some cryptic tweets made from Raghuvanshi’s account and will probe if they were some sort of password to open the leaked documents. Sources said Raghuvanshi had been under Delhi Police’s surveillance since last September, when its special cell had registered an FIR for espionage. Considering the “gravity and sensitivity” of the case, the ministry of home affairs subsequently transferred the probe to CBI in December, which then filed a fresh case.
It further stated that this was an international network, in which some Indian journalists “are supplying strategic and secret information to intelligence agencies of enemy countries”.