Nagpur: The Bombay High Court has granted bail to a former engineer of BrahMos Aerospace Pvt Ltd, arrested in 2018 on charges of spying for Pakistan’s intelligence agency ISI, noting he has been in jail for almost five years and the trial in the case may not conclude soon.
A single bench of Justice Anil Kilor, while granting bail to him on April 3, also remarked that prima facie there was no material to suggest the alleged act was committed intentionally by the accused, Nishant Aggrawal.
The HC’s Nagpur bench allowed the petition filed by Aggrawal seeking bail on the ground there was no progress in the trial and that he has been in jail for four years and six months.
The bench directed the accused to furnish a personal bond of Rs 25,000 and attend the Nagpur police station three times a week till the end of the trial.
Aggrawal, employed in the technical research section of the company’s missile centre in Nagpur, was arrested in October 2018 in a joint operation by the Military Intelligence and the Anti-Terrorism Squads (ATS) of Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra.
The former BrahMos Aerospace engineer was booked under various provisions of the Indian Penal Code and the stringent Official Secrets Act (OSA). He had worked at the BrahMos facility for four years and was accused of leaking sensitive technical information to Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).