In the digital age, espionage no longer requires trench coats, cipher wheels or secret meetings in dim alleys. All it takes is a friend request, a flattering message, and a vulnerable mind. In India, national security hinges on the loyalty of its uniformed and civilian defence personnel.

In such a country, the oldest trick in the spy playbook is honey trapping, and it has been wreaking havoc for decades.

The latest arrest of 27-year-old Ravindra Muralidhar Verma in Maharashtra has revealed yet again how intelligence operatives from across the border exploit romance and desire to lure individuals into betraying their nations.

Verma was civilian defence personnel, who was trapped by Pakistani agents posing as a woman on social media. This is not the first case, and sadly, it will not be the last.

The mole who mapped our Navy – Verma and the cost of desire

Ravindra Muralidhar Verma was not a high-ranking officer in the Indian Navy. He was not a hardened traitor either. Yet, his access and carelessness, or perhaps his calculated betrayal, led to one of the most worrying breaches in recent naval memories.

As an electrical engineer working with Krasni Defence Technology Pvt Ltd, Verma was responsible for servicing sensitive naval assets at places like the Naval Dockyards and Mazagon Dock. He had access to restricted areas because of his job. Reportedly, he memorised and later shared classified data about 14 Indian warships, including their movements and deployments.

Verma’s journey into espionage began with Facebook friend requests from accounts bearing names like “Payal Sharma” and “Ishpreet”. The women, supposedly researching naval projects, drew him in with emotional bonding, flattery, and eventually, money.

One alias, “Priti Jaiswal”, became the central point of contact. Communications soon shifted from Facebook to WhatsApp where Verma allegedly sent sketches, diary entries, and even audio recordings. In one recovered voice note, he reported a day’s ship inspections and mentioned forwarding details to both his handler and someone he called “sir”.

Mumbai ATS confirmed that at least five of the 14 ships Verma listed were indeed operational, and their details classified. The scale of compromise could point to a larger spy network. His devices are under forensic examination. Meanwhile, his family claimed he was emotionally manipulated.

However, money trails linked to multiple accounts and archived chats suggest he was aware of what he was doing.

The line between seduction and sedition dangerously faded away in Verma’s and many other individuals’ cases where they were honeytrapped to leak sensitive information.

How ‘Neha Sharma’ trapped a missile scientist

Verma is not alone. There are many others who got honey trapped. While Verma’s case is alarming, it is far from isolated.

In 2018, a young and promising engineer, Nishant Aggarwal, was working at BrahMos Aerospace, India’s premier supersonic missile facility. He was arrested for espionage after falling into a honeytrap.

His online interactions with Pakistan-based handlers using fake Facebook profiles such as “Pooja Ranjan” and “Neha Sharma” led to the unauthorised sharing of sensitive missile data. The Pakistani operatives posed as Indian women and allegedly lured Aggarwal into sustaining communication over two years.

Aggarwal was picked up in a joint operation by the Uttar Pradesh ATS and military intelligence. IP addresses linked to the fake accounts traced back to Islamabad, confirming the cross-border nature of the trap.

Police also recovered “extremely sensitive documents” from his possession, including material related to the BrahMos missile, one of India’s most strategically significant weapons that also played a crucial role in the recent Operation Sindoor against terrorists and Pakistani armed forces.

After years of investigation and trial, he was finally sentenced in June 2024 by a Nagpur court. He received life imprisonment under the Official Secrets Act and 14 years of rigorous imprisonment under the IT Act.

Like Verma, his case highlighted how emotional vulnerabilities can become dangerous access points into India’s most guarded defence secrets.

A DRDO lab head and ‘Zara from the UK’ – When lust overrode loyalty

Another notable case was that of Pradeep Kurulkar, who was once a respected director at a DRDO lab in Pune. However, he was arrested in 2023 for compromising national defence by falling for a fabricated digital persona.

The woman who contacted him called herself “Zara Dasgupta”. She claimed to be a UK-based software engineer. In reality, she was a Pakistani intelligence operative who lured Kurulkar through suggestive chats, obscene videos, and late-night voice calls made through WhatsApp and other encrypted platforms.

According to the chargesheet filed by Maharashtra ATS, their exchanges spanned at least six months from June to December 2022. During that time, he reportedly shared details about critical Indian defence systems, including drone technologies, the BrahMos launcher, the Agni missile system, and military bridging platforms. The IP address behind “Zara’s” profile was eventually traced to Pakistan, but by then, much had been compromised.

He allegedly stored sensitive DRDO files on his personal phone and shared not just technical details but even his personal and official schedules. Just before DRDO caught on and launched an internal probe, he abruptly blocked Zara’s number. However, the deception persisted. He soon received a message from another number asking, “Why you blocked my number?” By May 2023, he was arrested under the Official Secrets Act.

When will they learn? The tragic simplicity of a digital seduction

By now, it should be common sense. You do not touch live wires. You do not accept food from strangers on a train. And you certainly do not send photographs of naval ship placements, missile launcher specifications, or internal DRDO schedules to someone named Angel Priya with a Korean display picture and a profile that claims she is researching naval engineering from Birmingham.

And yet, here we are. Again.

Every few months, one more defence insider, an engineer, a contractor, a scientist, or even a YouTuber, gets emotionally entangled and intellectually paralysed by what is clearly a digital honeytrap. Just as the government runs ads on not falling prey to digital arrest scams, it seems the government now needs to run another campaign asking people not to fall for “Angel Priya” and share sensitive information that can affect national security.

Despite decades of awareness about Pakistan’s espionage operations and their use of social media for intelligence gathering, some people still fall for Angel Priyas and disclose India’s most sensitive military information. Either they do not use their common sense or they believe they cannot be honeytrapped. These individuals need to come out of the teenage romance novel they believe they live in and act responsibly.

It is not just about Pakistan’s tactics. The bigger question is how these people clear security screenings, possess technical training, and work on missile systems, yet still fall for a few flirty texts and pixelated video calls. Is it loneliness? Is it some misplaced masculinity that makes them feel important when someone pretends to admire them? Or is it just plain stupidity masked as emotional vulnerability? Imagine getting a life sentence for sending sensitive information to a fake profile named “Angel Priya” on Facebook.

In any case, it is becoming clear that we need more than background checks and Non-Disclosure Agreements. India needs a full-scale, no-nonsense awareness campaign, something between a railway safety jingle and a digital hygiene crash course.

Bold posters and compulsory training sessions that say, “Do not send classified files to women you just met on the internet”, “If she calls you ‘sir ji’ after two texts, it is probably a spy”, or “No one falls in love with your ship maintenance job in under three minutes unless they want warship secrets, not you.”

This is not espionage of a high calibre. This is embarrassment. National security compromised not by sophisticated hacking, but by conversations that begin with “Hi handsome” and end with classified information being passed to our enemies.

It is time we stop treating this as isolated betrayal and start accepting it as a pattern. A preventable, ridiculous, and yet increasingly dangerous pattern.

Angel Priya

Angel Priya mentioned in this article refers to a famous Twitter account which was actually run by a man. Later several Angel Priya accounts appeared on Facebook. Earlier this year, comedian Zakir Khan claimed that he was behind the original fake account. With time, ‘Angel Priya’ has become the generic term for fake social media accounts of women run by men. Such accounts use either images of other real women, or computer generated images, as display picture for the social media accounts.