Surat police arrested an ISI agent on Tuesday based on information from the Southern Army Command’s Military Intelligence. Deepak Kishor Salhunke, 33, who owns a clothing store in Surat, was apprehended and arrested by the Surat crime branch.
Salhunke, a resident of Surat’s Bhuvneswari nagar area, is accused of acting as a resident agent for the Pakistan intelligence agency ISI and running a financial module through which he allegedly received and transferred money to serving personnel as well as civilians in exchange for critical information.
The ISI agent was said to be in contact with two Pakistan-based handlers, Hamid and Kashif, and was discussing sensitive information with them. Officials said Salhunke was running a shop in Surat called ‘Sai Fashions’ to avoid detection and facilitate his espionage activities.
Following his arrest, a FIR was filed at the Detection of Crime Branch (DCB) police station Surat and the accused spy was handed over to the Special Operations Group (SOG) for further investigation. According to officials, the crime branch had Salhunke under surveillance for some time before making the arrest. Suspicion in the form of cross-border money transfers, being allegedly befriended by foreign intelligence agents on social media, and allegedly sending a SIM card to a neighbouring country were all factors that led to his arrest.
Salhunke was allegedly duped into sharing sensitive information by a social media handle named Poonam Sharma, who later revealed their identity as Hamid, a Pakistan ISI handle named by the police in this case.
Salhunke allegedly passed on army troop and vehicle movement information via WhatsApp calls. According to police, Salhunke has allegedly received Rs 75,856 for this information.