Telangana Police arrested DRDO engineer for sharing sensitive information in a honey trap
Wednesday | May 21 2025 | 12:54:56 PM
Wednesday | May 21 2025 | 12:54:56 PM
New Delhi, June 18
The Telangana State Police arrested an engineer with the DRDO laboratory — Defence Research and Development Laboratory (DRDL) in Hyderabad on charges of leaking sensitive information on India’s missile development programmes.
The accused was identified as Dukka Mallikarjuna Reddy (29), is a native of Visakhapatnam and was working as a contractual Quality Assurance Engineer of the Advance Naval System Programme of DRDL at the Research Centre Imarat (RCI) in Balapur.
The police said Reddy allegedly shared information to a suspected Pakistani spy, who posed as a woman working with a UK-based defence journal.
The officials added that woman was identified as Natasha Rao, aka Simran Chopra aka Omisha Addii, for nearly two years over which he shared crucial information after falling for a honeytrap.
The Special Operations Team of Rachakonda police and Balapur police held a joint operation. The police seized two mobile phones, a sim card and a laptop from his possession.
According to the police, after working with a private company for two years on a DRDL project, Reddy approached DRDL and joined as a contractual employee in the ANSP project in 2020. He had mentioned on his Facebook profile that he was working for DRDL.
He had reportedly shared photos and documents regarding missile development programmes at RCI over his Facebook communication with the suspected ISI handler, police added.
The police have booked the accused under Section 409 (criminal breach of trust) of the Indian Penal Code and various Sections of the Official Secrets Act, 1923.
