Pune-based DRDO scientist attracted to Pak spy agent, revealed India’s missile secrets: ATS

The Maharashtra anti-terrorism squad (ATS) has said that Pune-based DRDO scientist Pradeep Kurulkar, who was arrested on May 3 on espionage charges, had shared sensitive details about India’s missile, drone and robotics programmes with a female Pakistan-based intelligence operative. 

ATS claimed to have unearthed “explosive” chats between the scientist and the Pakistani operative. ATS in its chargesheet, which was filed in the court last week, said Kurulkar was attracted to the Pakistani Intelligence Operative, who used the alias 'Zara Dasgupta'.  

Kurulkar, who was the director of one of the labs of the DRDO discussed Indian missile systems among other classified defence projects while chatting with her in order to establish intimate relations with her. 

Kurulkar and 'Zara Dasgupta' were in contact through WhatsApp as well as voice and video calls, the chargesheet said. 

'Dasgupta' claimed to be a software engineer based in the UK and befriended him by sending obscene messages and videos. During the investigation, her IP address was traced to Pakistan, the ATS noted. 

The Pakistani agent tried to get classified and sensitive information regarding the Brahmos Launcher, Drone, UCV, Agni Missile Launcher and Military Bridging System, among other things, it said. 

"Kurulkar, who was attracted to her, stored the classified and sensitive information of DRDO on his personal phone and then allegedly shared it with Zara," the chargesheet said. 

He chatted with her about various projects, including surface-to-air missiles (SAM), drones, Brahmos and Agni Missile Launchers and UCV, it said. 

The two were in contact from June 2022 to December 2022, as per the ATS.  

ATS said that the alleged Pakistani agent created multiple fake accounts under different names to engage with Kurulkar. Two of these names were Zara Dasgupta and Juhi Arora.  

The same operative also set up accounts under these names on messaging apps using two different phone numbers with the +44 London code. 

ATS claimed that Kurulkar in his messages shared freely about the Meteor missile which is in the works at DRDO, about the Brahmos missiles, Rafael, Akash and Astra missile systems, and also the Agni-6 missile launcher in the development of which he was involved. 

Kurulkar also discussed DRDO’s ongoing work on the Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicle, the Bharat Quadcopter, and Rustom, the medium altitude long-endurance unmanned combat air vehicle that DRDO is developing.  

According to the chats attached with the ATS’s chargesheet, Kurulkar and the Pakistani operative would preface these serious conversations on defence issues with a playful “Babe”. 

Mentioning one of the chats, ATS said the Pakistani operative asked him whether the Agni-6 launcher test has been successful, to which he responded saying: “The launcher is my design babe… It was a great success.” 

 (With PTI inputs)