Fake Social Media Profiles: According to an alert sent by federal security agencies to the Punjab police headquarters, some female Pakistani Intelligence Operatives (PIO) are utilising phoney social media identities to target officers from the Indian Army, Navy, and Air Force. The Punjab Director General of Police (DGP) issued a list of 14 suspect identities designed to entice Indian officials.
Indian Army Asks Officials to Stay Alert Against Fake Social Media Profiles ISI Agents
“Because the names of these female PIOs are similar to common Indian female names, Indians can trust them.” We have blocked over a dozen such false profiles, but new ones are generated every day to catch individuals off guard,” a senior police official told India Today. Fake profiles were discovered on many social media platforms, including Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, and Telegram.
In addition to officials, police warned the general public about the dangers posed by such accounts. “Because we are the border district and the Indo-Pak border is only 26 kilometres away from the highly sensitive Pathankot area with highly sensitive installations, we take extra precautions,” said a senior police official. He went on to say that the accounts are made up of false images of women.
After a person begins communicating with such personas, they are blackmailed by threatening that their indecent images would be distributed, according to the official. Within two weeks, over 325 people were approached using bogus social media profiles, according to investigations.
Fake Social Media Profiles: Honey Trap Incidents with Officials in The Past
In the last five years, there have been multiple cases where officials have fallen prey to such bogus accounts. They were eventually arrested for sharing classified information with the ISI under the Official Secrets Act. There was a significant outcry in the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) after DRDO scientist Pradeep Kurulkar was charged with espionage for disclosing the country’s BrahMos missile secrets to a female PIO identified as Zara Dasgupta.
Kurulkar was arrested in May of this year for displaying a top-secret study on the BrahMos missile technology. Many other officials have previously been arrested on suspicion of providing sensitive information to the ISI.
According to police, the majority of those jailed under the Official Secrets Act were army jawans who were enticed by money or obscene audio and video communications. These agents were also attempting to hack into the data. In the last two years, two such occurrences have been reported in Kashmir’s Pathankot.
On February 26, 2022, Army Jawan Amarpal Singh of the Pathankot cantonment was arrested at the Telwandi Bharyhwal village phone in Gurdaspur on suspicion of transmitting vital information with the ISI. On October 27, 2021, Mandeep Singh, a citizen of Sirsa, Haryana, was detained from the Pathankot cantonment area on spying accusations. Sunil Kumar, an Air Force Jawan, was detained on similar accusations on August 30, 2014. He was detained at Guteti village, Jodhpur, Rajasthan. Meena Raina, an ISI operative, had set him up.
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