High Court sets aside life sentence of ex-BrahMos scientist Nishant Agarwal

 

 

 

The Nagpur Bench of Bombay High Court has set aside the life sentence given to former BrahMos Aerospace senior scientist Nishant Agarwal and cleared him of major espionage charges and opening the way for his release. Agarwal was accused of leaking sensitive missile-related information to Pakistani intelligence agencies. In 2024, a court at Nagpur had sentenced him to life imprisonment for spying.

 

He had been arrested in October 2018 after investigators claimed he was in contact with suspected Pakistani operatives through fake Facebook accounts. A division bench of Justice Anil Kilor and Justice Pravin Patil cancelled the conviction under Section 66(f) of the Information Technology Act, which deals with cyber terrorism, and under important sections of the Official Secrets Act (OSA). The judges held that although Agarwal violated procedures by storing classified information on a personal device, the prosecution could not prove that the data was ever transferred to Pakistan or any third party. The High Court upheld only one charge: unauthorised possession of secret documents under Section 5(1)(d) of the OSA. Evidence showed that Agarwal had moved 19 classified BrahMos files from his official laptop to his personal laptop. For this offence, he received a three-year sentence. Since he has spent more than six years in the custody, this punishment is considered fully served.

 

The prosecution had earlier claimed that Agarwal was honey-trapped by Pakistani intelligence operatives using fake Facebook profiles of women and that malware on his laptop had secretly sent BrahMos missile data to foreign servers. The High Court, however, found that there was no technical proof to show that any information actually left his device or reached another country. With the charges of aiding an enemy state not proved, the 14-year sentence under the IT Act and other serious espionage charges were struck down. Agarwal had worked as a senior system engineer at BrahMos Aerospace, a joint venture of DRDO and Russia’s NPO Mashinostroyenia. He was associated with the development of India’s supersonic cruise missile capable of being launched from land, air, sea and underwater. He is NIT Kurukshetra alumnus and a DRDO Young Scientist Award recipient.