Balasore: A suspected ISI agent, Asif Ali, was produced before the JMFC Court in Balasore Friday by the Meerut police.
Ali, who was earlier lodged in Meerut Jail in Uttar Pradesh in another case, has been brought to Odisha for trial in connection with his alleged involvement in a spying racket. The case is linked to the 2015 arrest of Ishwar Behera, a contractual photographer at the Integrated Test Range (ITR), Chandipur, a unit of DRDO. Behera was charged under Sections 120A, 120B, and 121 of the IPC for conspiring against the Government of India and allegedly leaking classified documents and photographs of ITR Chandipur to foreign agencies. During investigation, it was revealed that Behera had close links with Asif Ali, leading to Ali’s arrest in Meerut.
Notably, Behera, a native of Kantipur in Mayurbhanj district, was sentenced to life imprisonment February 11, 2021 for passing classified defence information in 2014. Investigators had also found that Behera received money transfers through internet banking and money orders from several places, including Mumbai, Meerut, Ajmer, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, and even Abu Dhabi in the Middle East.