Due to the unavailability of sufficient supporting documents, Additional District Judge (ADJ) dropped 3 charges slapped against the accused in the Chandipur ITR espionage case under Official Secret Act 3, 4 and 5 on Thursday.
Police had booked the five accused under sections 120 (B), 121 and 34 IPC for the espionage case at Chandipur ITR n Odisha's Balasore district on September 2021.
The accused are identified as Sachin Kumar, a driver at Chandipur DRDO, Basanta Behera, an AC operator, Hemanta Kumar Mistri, a diesel gen-set operator, Tapas Ranjan Nayak, an employee at ITR main gate and Sk Musafir, an AC operator.
The Odisha Crime Branch on October 2021, claimed Pakistan links of the mysterious woman who is suspected to be the 'handler' of the spy ring engaged in leaking out sensitive intel from the high-security defence establishment.
During the investigation into the Chandipur DRDO espionage case, Pakistan link has surfaced as four Facebook accounts of the mysterious ‘operative’ were operated from Pakistan through proxy IPs to keep the location secret.
Out of the four accounts, three were operated from Islamabad whereas one was from Rawalpindi.
The female operative had been in contact with all the five arrested staff of the DRDO ITR centre with different identity and names since February 2020 and is suspected to have been eliciting sensitive defence secrets from them.