DRDO espionage case: Kurulkar’s lawyer says phone’s IMEI not mentioned in forensic testing plea

Ganu also argued against the ATS claim that it has not been able to retrieve some data because of a technical problem in the phone, given that the police claim to have already retrieved WhatsApp chats from it.

Special judge V R Kachare asked the prosecution to clear the ambiguity about the IMEI number.

Kurulkar was arrested on May 3 by the ATS under Official Secrets Act sections pertaining to spying over his alleged chats with a female Pakistani intelligence operative. The Defence Research and Development Organisation suspended Kurulkar from service a few days later.

According to the ATS, the Pakistani spy, identifying herself as Zara Dasgupta, came in contact with Kurulkar on WhatsApp and told him that she was a software engineer based in the UK. She allegedly lured Kurulkar with explicit messages, voice calls and video calls.

The ATS has alleged that Kurulkar shared sensitive and classified information with the Pakistani spy between June 10, 2022, and February 24, 2023. It has named the alleged spy as a co-accused in the case.

The ATS has attached with the chargesheet several purported WhatsApp chats between Kurulkar and the alleged spy and claimed that they were retrieved from the scientist’s mobile phone seized during the investigation.

In its application for sending Kurulkar’s phone to a forensic lab, the ATS has said that some data that he had allegedly deleted could not be recovered owing to some technical problem in the handset.

As stated in the chargesheet, Kurulkar and the Pakistani spy had had WhatsApp chats on the DRDO’s Brahmos, Agni 6, Rustom (a medium-altitude, long-endurance unmanned air vehicle), surface-to-air missiles, unmanned combat air vehicles, drone projects, Quadcopter, duty chart, meteor missile, Rafale jets, and Akash and Astra missiles. The chargesheet also refers to an executive of a private defence company, which is a DRDO vendor and makes “robotic equipment” for Indian forces.

The ATS has submitted “confidential” documents against Kurulkar to the court in a sealed envelope and advocate Ganu has filed an application for their copies.

On August 2, Kurulkar applied for bail claiming that the information he is alleged to have shared with a Pakistani spy was not confidential but available in the public domain. The prosecution, represented by Vijay Fargade, on Wednesday sought more time to file its reply to the application.

The court asked the prosecution to file its responses to Kurulkar’s bail application as well as the demand for the “confidential” documents, during the next hearing, slated for August 18.