Shruti Suman
New Delhi: Former BrahMos Aerospace engineer Nishant Agarwal has been sentenced to life imprisonment by a Nagpur court for spying for Pakistan’s ISI. Agarwal was arrested in 2018 on charges of leaking information about the BrahMos missile to Pakistan’s intelligence agency.
Key Facts About Nishant Agarwal:
- Nishant Agarwal was a senior systems engineer at BrahMos Aerospace, a joint venture between India’s DRDO and Russia’s Military Industrial Consortium (NPO Mashinostroyenia). The project involved the development of India’s supersonic cruise missile, capable of being launched from land, air, sea, and underwater.
Agarwal received the Young Scientists Award from the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO).
He was recognized as a talented engineer and had studied at the National Institute of Technology, Kurukshetra.
In 2018, while working at the BrahMos Aerospace facility in Nagpur, Agarwal was arrested by the Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) of the Uttar Pradesh Police.
The ATS alleged that Agarwal was found chatting on Facebook with Pakistan-based IDs, leading to his arrest after conclusive evidence was gathered. Agrawal’s personal computer was seized during a raid at his residence, Nagpur.
The BrahMos missile, with a maximum range of 290 km, is the fastest cruise missile in the world and can be launched from a submarine, ship, aircraft, or land. It is developed through a joint venture between India’s DRDO and Russia’s NPO Mashinostroyeniya.
