India’s intelligence agencies have sounded out the country’s security establishment on an elaborate plan that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) has put in place to honey-trap the personnel of Indian military and para military forces to secure classified information on sensitive installations and strategic assets.
According to well-placed sources in the central intelligence agency, the Pakistan Army’s cross-border espionage wing has deployed 10 modules of over 100 girls in the country to ensnare Indian military personnel to spy for them. The girls, including college girls and sex workers, are being trained as honey-traps by the ISI for espionage in India.
The central intelligence agency has alerted security establishment, particularly Indian Army and the Border Security Force (BSF) personnel to be wary of friendship requests on social media and has advised them to not accept such requests from unknown persons, said the sources.
A senior official with the agency told The Daily Guardian that ISI’s Unit 412 has launched these honey-trap modules from Hyderabad in Sindh Province of Pakistan. The ISI has recruited beautiful girls from cities like Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad and is providing them training in all tricks of the trade including honey trap for espionage in India. ISI’s Unit 412 is working under the command of a brigadier and captain-rank officer of Pakistan’s Army, said the official.
After training the women as intelligence operatives, the ISI provides these women Indian Hindu identities, complete with names such as Khushi, Kalpana, Neetu, Geetu, Avni, Muskan and Harleen, among others. They are also trained to wear clothes and make-up Indian style. These girls are provided vital information on Indian army officers, there ranks and locations.
After their training is complete, these honey-trap operatives are assigned rooms within the premises of Pakistan’s army camp to conduct their activities. In order to create a familiar feel about the place, their rooms are equipped with photo-frames of Hindu gods and goddesses and a small temple so that their subjects of interest do not have any reason to doubt their antecedents and intentions during video calls.
These ISI operatives hit the social media using fake IDs and send friend requests to army officers. After the officers concerned accept their friend request, they trap them by first indulging in inane love talks. When it goes well as planned, the girls propose them and after that they begin sex chats. Finding their targets completely hooked and bowled over, these girls make nude video calls to complete the act of trapping their target, who think what they are exchanging or doing on social media is a private affair. Winning over their trust as their beloved, these girls cajole them to get the sensitive information ISI needs. The officers get the shock of their lives when they refuse and the girls get back to them with recorded video calls and sex chats and threaten to expose them. Blackmailed into submission, their targets collect the information sought and share with them.
Those operatives who succeed in honey-trapping an officer and extracting desired information on India’s military installations and strategic assets, the ISI
promotes them in rank and increases their perks.
According to the source, instances of army officials having been honey-trapped have increased of late.
An army jawan, who had fallen in a honey trap, was arrested in Jaisalmer on 27 July for spying for the neighbouring country. On 26 June, Shantimoy Rana, an Indian Army soldier, was arrested in Rajasthan on charges of spying for Pakistan. The accused was honey-trapped by two women from across the border and ended up sharing classified information on his regiment and videos of army exercise with them. In a similar instance, Rajasthan Police on 18 May arrested an army jawan, who hailed from Uttarakhand and was posted at Jodhpur. The jawan was honey-trapped and was forced to share important information with his ISI handler.
An Indian Air Force jawan, Devendra Sharma, was court martialled in April after he was caught passing sensitive information to his Pakistan handler after he was honey-trapped.