FBI to help in Port Blair case

Following a report in The Indian Express (May 6,2010),the Army and the Ministry of Defence played it down,dismissing it as a case of “hacking”. The Ministry was subsequently provided with a CD of around 20,000 pages of documents downloaded from the officer’s computer. Many of these documents and presentations were of a classified nature and a majority of them,not supposed to be in his possession.

Top MI officials who briefed The Indian Express on the case explained that they were currently indexing the documents,after which they will be dispatched to the intelligence wings of the Navy,Air Force and Army for classification and sourcing.

A team of three Defence officers have been deputed for the inquiry even as the Major himself is being questioned daily by officials of different agencies. The officer is understood to have been reiterating that he had collected the presentations and papers since he was preparing for his Staff College examination,due in September.

While MI officials deny that other senior MoD officers may be implicated in the case,this might well be the case when the custodians of the secret/ classified presentations and documents found on Major Dey’s computer are identified.

Senior officials in the Ministry of Home Affairs — who have been pressing the MoD for quick action in the Port Blair case — said that they have been orally told that court martial proceedings in the case would commence soon against the Major for possessing classified documents he is not authorised to keep and storing it on a computer which is linked to the internet. This is even as the final forensic report from Hyderabad,which will establish the nature of deletions,both before and after the inquiry began,is awaited.

Highly-placed intelligence sources also told The Indian Express that besides the original dispatch from the Major’s computer to Pakistan,there is confirmation of at least two or three more dispatches to the same IP address. Interestingly,while the IP address belonging to the ISI was under the scanner of US agencies following leads given by Lashkar-e-Toiba operative David Headley,MI officials say that they too had the IP address listed as part of a counter-intelligence exercise but did not detect the suspect transmission of messages from Port Blair in time.