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The Odisha CID Crime Branch (CB) has found the role of another ‘woman operative’ who was in touch with one of the five accused who were earlier arrested in connection with the highly sensitive Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) espionage case.
Apart from this, the investigating agency has also stumbled upon some financial transactions of the accused having links to Mumbai. Crime Branch ADG, Sanjeev Panda on Saturday said that the suspect woman had established contacts with the accused and developed acquaintance by claiming that she belonged to the same district as the former.
However, Panda said, it is too early to say if it was the same woman who had honey trapped the accused, or someone else. “So far we have come across a woman’s ID through which contacts were established with the accused. The woman had claimed that she worked in Dubai. After developing closeness with the accused, she demanded money from the accused which she promised to return,” said Panda.
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According to Panda, the woman had demanded Rs 40,000 from the accused and the latter had deposited the amount in two installments in two different bank accounts in Mumbai on April 18, 2021.
On April 19, the amount was returned to the SBI account of the accused at Chandipur branch. It has been ascertained that somebody had deposited the money in the accused’s account, he said.
“We have identified the two persons through whose accounts the money transfers were made by the accused. Our team will visit Mumbai for further investigation in this connection,” said Panda.
Earlier, the Crime Branch had revealed that the mysterious woman operative, who had allegedly honey-trapped five ITR employees, was operating seven Facebook accounts. Four of those were being handled from Pakistan’s Islamabad and Rawalpindi, while the other three, which were active then, were being used from different locations with proxy internet protocol (IP) addresses.
On September 15, a special squad of the Balasore Police led by the Eastern Range IG picked up five contractual employees at DRDO from the main gate of its integrated test range (ITR) for questioning over espionage charges. Out of them, four accused were working at the launch pad-3 of ITR, Chandipur.
