ISI agent sentenced to five years of rigorous imprisonment
Ali was also fined Rs4800 by the ATS court, and if he did not pay it, he would spend another 15 days in prison, ATS officials said.
Ayodhya resident Aftab Ali was sentenced to five years and three months of rigorous imprisonment for spying for Pakistan’s secret agency Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) for nearly three years before he was arrested by UP Anti-Terror Squad (ATS) on May 3, 2017. The ATS officials said the ATS court also slapped a fine of ₹4800 on Ali and stated that he would spend an additional 15 days in prison if he failed to submit the amount.
The press note shared by the UP ATS stated that the ATS court sentenced him on Saturday after finding Aftab Ali guilty under Indian Penal Code (IPC) sections 420 for fraud, 468 for using forged documents as genuine as well as 120-B for criminal conspiracy and sections 3/4, 5/4, 9/4 of Official Secrets Act and section 17 and 18 of Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), 1967.
It further stated that Aftab Ali was lured into the ISI network by some officials of the Pakistan high commission after his visa application to visit Pakistan to meet his relatives was rejected thrice by the embassy before 2014. The ISI operatives, who were keeping a vigil over Ali’s quest to visit Pakistan, took advantage of his desperateness and approached him over the telephone in 2014, offering him an assignment of clicking and sending them the pictures of the Ayodhya cantonment area. In return, they facilitated Ali’s visa application and got it approved. Ali visited Pakistan twice in 2014 and 2016.
The ISI operatives also provided him with other facilities during his visit to Pakistan in 2014. They also paid him some money when he was returning to India after a few months’ stay. Between May 2014 and May 2017, Ali regularly shared information with ISI related to the movement of defence troops in Lucknow and Ayodhya and various other important details through WhatsApp and email.
A senior ATS official said the arrest of Aftab Ali exposed a big espionage racket spread across the country, and a key ISI handler, Javed and his subordinate Ataf Qureshi were arrested in Mumbai later in May 2017. He said Javed was a big hawala operator and had an international network. He said Javed was ISI’s main financer in India and used to get orders from Pakistan to transfer money to agents across the country. He said Javed had been providing money to ISI agents on instructions from Pakistan, and security and investigative agencies had been searching for him for many years.