In a big twist to a high-profile defence secrets case, Nishant Agarwal, an engineer who worked at BrahMos Aerospace Limited, has been found not guilty of the most serious charges brought against him. Agarwal was arrested back in October 2018 for allegedly passing sensitive defence information to Pakistani intelligence agents.
BrahMos scientist Nishant Agarwal arrested for 'passing secrets' to #Pakistan cleared of chargeshttps://t.co/aWUOwYuf1a
— The Times Of India (@timesofindia) December 1, 2025
A lower court had earlier sentenced Agarwal a long 14-year jail term for misusing IT systems to send secret data to people who could harm the country. However, the higher judiciary has now thrown out those major charges, including those under the Information Technology Act and the Official Secrets Act.
The only thing he was still found guilty of was having official documents on his own personal computer, which was a violation of security rules. For this specific charge, the lower court had given him a three-year sentence. Since Agarwal has already been in custody for that amount of time, he is now eligible for immediate release, wrapping up his legal battle.
Agarwal was arrested in a joint effort by Military Intelligence (MI) and the Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) of Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra. He worked in the technical research section of BAPL, an Indo-Russian joint venture company that makes the powerful BrahMos missiles.
During the investigation, important documents related to the BrahMos missile were found on his personal devices. It was also found that Pakistani spies had tricked Agarwal by getting him to install three apps, Qwhisper, Chat to Hire, and X-trust on his personal laptop in 2017.
These apps were actually malware designed to steal data, which included the classified information from his computer. He was chatting with a person named ‘Sejal’ on platforms like LinkedIn, where she pretended to be a recruiter from ‘Hays Aviation’ in the UK. This person was part of a group that shared tips on how to trick Indian defence staff.
