Sitting at a restaurant in Nagpur, a smile on his face, Aggarwal is not bitter, not at the charges that were eventually thrown out by court, not at the abrupt end of a career that saw him win the DRDO’s ‘Young Scientist Award’ in 2017-18 and land him a job in BrahMos Aerospace, and not at the time inside prison – he was never treated badly, he says.
If he bears any rancour, it is for what his wife, Kshitija, 30 had to go through; they had just got married when he was arrested, and was pregnant when he was convicted.
Aggarwal was accused of leaking sensitive technical information to Pakistani intelligence agencies, and sentenced to life imprisonment by a lower court last year. On Monday, the Nagpur Bench of the Bombay High Court set aside the life sentence awarded under Section 66(f) of the Information Technology Act and major sections of the Official Secrets Act, saying the prosecution had failed to prove that sensitive data had been transmitted to “enemy entities”.
However, it held Aggarwal guilty of procedural violations. That invites a jail term of three years at the most, and since he had already spent a cumulative seven years and two months behind bars, the High Court set him free.
For Aggarwal, the arrest on October 8, 2018, marked the end of “a golden period” of his life. BrahMos Aerospace is an Indo-Russian joint venture involving the DRDO, to design and manufacture supersonic cruise missiles. “I learned a lot, I grew there,” says Aggarwal of his time at BrahMos. “It was like I died when I was arrested.”
His lingering memory is of the “lal chuda (wedding bangles)” still on Kshitija’s wrists. “We had been married just five months and 20 days.”
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Kshitija’s father Ramesh Gupta says: “My daughter had strong faith. She used to say, ‘Nishant will come back’. She also took me along for court hearings, saying, ‘Papa, chalo (Come Papa), we have a lot to do.”
Gupta was present outside Nagpur Central Jail when Aggarwal was released late Tuesday evening. Kshitija is waiting with their infant son at home.
Aggarwal plays down the toll of the charges, particularly of being a “spy”. “I knew from the first day that I was innocent… that kept me going, and still does.”
The key to surviving prison was falling into his usual routine, he adds. “Outside, my days were 8 hours of sleep, 8 hours of office, and 8 hours for personal time. I distributed my time inside into exercise, yoga, meditation, study… It kept my body and mind sane.”
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It was this discipline, he says, that helped him complete a Master’s degree in Political Science from IGNOU inside prison. When despair overtook him, he captured it in poems. Now he has a collection covering a range of moods, from poignant and happy to sad.
Aggarwal also closely studied the case against him. “Now I understand the entire law ecosystem… My lawyers and I fought with whatever ammunition we had.”
In 2023, Aggarwal secured bail, and thought that the worst was over. “I gave interviews in Nagpur. I got a good job in business management.”
But in 2024 came the conviction, and a return to jail, this time leaving a pregnant Kshitija behind.
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The charges stemmed from a chat Aggarwal had in 2017, when he submitted his biodata on LinkedIn for a job, and responded to a friend request sent by an account which, it turned out, was being operated from Pakistan.
In its order, the High Court observed that the chats submitted by the Anti-Terror Squad of the Uttar Pradesh Police showed that the other person was inviting Aggarwal for a job interview and asked him to download certain software, which turned out to be malware.
The order further said that the investigating officer had himself said that Aggarwal did not send or upload any departmental documents on LinkedIn, nor did BrahMos prohibit use of LinkedIn.
Aggarwal’s lawyer Chaitanya B Barve told PTI that the court held that the prosecution had failed to establish intent. Even the files recovered from his personal laptop were found to be part of the training kit handed over to his entire batch of 23 who were recruited by BrahMos in 2013, the defence said.
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In its 49-page judgment, the court noted that prosecution witness N N Kumar, Executive Director (Production) with BrahMos Aerospace, had said Aggarwal’s superiors never complained of him misusing his computer.
The court noted that to attract charges that the prosecution wanted, it had to prove an intent to “threaten unity” or that Aggarwal acted “knowingly or intentionally”, and that an action had been committed “for any purpose prejudicial to the safety or interest of the State”, with necessary intention and knowledge.
The court observed that the prosecution had failed to do this.
Advocate Sanjay Doifode, the government pleader, said the court held that the prosecution’s case was not substantiated by technical evidence. But, he added, it convicted him “under Section 5(1)(d) of the Official Secrets Act”. “… it was established that he transferred 19 files containing secret BrahMos information from his official laptop to his personal device… However, it could not be proven that this secret information was actually transferred elsewhere,” Doifode said.
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Having won the legal fight, Aggarwal feels ready for the next chapter of his life. “The perspective is the same. The fire was there in my eyes on October 8, 2018, and that fire has only doubled. I am ready to run a full marathon now.”
But it won’t be in science. “Since I have an Executive MBA from IIM-Lucknow, I have political science qualifications along with business and administration and technical.” This, Aggarwal is confident, will help him pick up the pieces – if luck would have it in Uttar Pradesh, or Bhopal. But, he is ready to go wherever he finds good opportunities.
First, though, he wants to spend time with his 18-month child and his ageing parents. “My family suffered a lot. I was inside, but they were the ones facing social media, society, people, relatives. Everything took a toll.”
Speaking on the phone, Kshitija thanks her parents, in-laws and lawyers for their support. Recounting the past seven years, she says: “People thought, ‘Nishant must have done something’… I have waited a long time… My baby could not meet his father… I felt like I couldn’t even breathe, but now it’s okay. Everything is going to be fine.”
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If he has a lesson to share, Aggarwal says, it is that people should beware of being sucked into something on the Internet. “I did not even have a traffic challan in my name, before my arrest.”
He quotes a few lines he wrote during his time inside:
“Par himmat nahin harna, yahi seekha hai maine/ Yahan tak to sirf trailer tha meri zindagi ka, picture abhi baaki hai (Not to lose courage, that is what I have learned in life / What has passed was just a trailer, the movie is yet to come).”
