New Delhi, The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a plea of Uttar Pradesh police challenging a Bombay High Court ruling absolving Brahmos aerospace engineer Nishant Agarwal of charges of espionage and the Official Secrets Act.
Event Context
A bench of Justices Sanjay Kumar and Sanjeev Sachdeva issued notice on a plea of UP’s Anti-Terrorist Squad challenging the order of the high court on December 1 last year which had absolved Agarwal of major charges.
The bench, in its order dated July 13, said, “Issue notice, returnable on August 31, 2026.”
Player Focus
BrahMos Aerospace is a joint venture between the Defence Research and Development Organisation and the military Industrial Consortium of Russia.
Agarwal was granted bail by the Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court in April, 2023.
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Team Analysis
The case, initially filed by the Uttar Pradesh ATS and heard in Lucknow, was later transferred to Nagpur as it was considered the place of the alleged offence. Agarwal got bail in the case in 2023.
The high court, however, found that Agarwal illegally stored sensitive data.
Aggrieved by the high court order, the UP government approached the apex court challenging it.
On June 3, 2024, the Nagpur district court sentenced Agarwal to life term under the Official Secrets Act for spying for Pakistan’s intelligence agency ISI.
Agarwal was also fined ₹3,000.
The trial court convicted Agarwal under Section 235 of the Criminal Procedure Code for an offence punishable under Section 66 of the IT Act and various sections of the Official Secrets Act , 1923.
Agarwal, employed in the technical research section of the company’s missile centre in Nagpur, was arrested in a joint operation by the Military Intelligence and Anti-Terrorism Squads of UP and Maharashtra in 2018.
The former BrahMos Aerospace engineer was booked under various provisions of the Indian Penal Code and the stringent OSA.
Agarwal had worked at the BrahMos facility for four years and was accused of leaking sensitive technical information to Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence .
Section 3 of the OSA says, “Penalties for spying: If any person for any purpose prejudicial to the safety or interests of the State… approaches, inspects, passes over or is in the vicinity of, or enters, any prohibited place… obtains, collects, records or publishes or communicates to any other person any secret official code or pass word, or any sketch, plan, model, article or note or other document or information which is calculated to be or might be or is intended to be, directly or indirectly, useful to an enemy or which relates to a matter the disclosure of which is likely to affect the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security of the State or friendly relations with foreign States; he shall be punishable with imprisonment for a term which may extend, where the offence is committed in relation to any work of defence, arsenal, naval, military or air force establishment or station, mine, minefield, factory, dockyard, camp, ship or aircraft or otherwise in relation to the naval, military or air force affairs of Government or in relation to any secret official code, to fourteen years and in other cases to three years.”
