Intelligence citadel breached!

New Delhi: A security breach at the National Security Council Secretariat, India’s top intelligence processing unit, may have led to sensitive information being leaked to foreign agents, The Sunday Express newspaper has claimed.

A director of the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), the country’s top external intelligence agency, has been asked not to return to work and his files and computers have been seized, the paper said in an exclusive report.

A computer systems analyst in the National Security Council Secretariat has been arrested and his residence raided. Also under watch is a Navy commander who was information security specialist at the secretariat.

Intelligence Bureau (IB) officials are still uncovering the damage at the secretariat, which is the repository of intelligence inputs from all security agencies at the Centre.

The paper quoting unnamed sources said the breach could have affected RAW, the secretariat and parts of the External Affairs Ministry.

Navy commander Mukesh Saini, who till recently headed the secretariat’s National Information Security Co-ordination Cell, is being questioned in connection with the security breach detected a month ago.

Saini was also a coordinator in the Indo-US Cyber Security Forum, a bilateral programme to ease information exchange. Last week, IB officials questioned in connection with alleged leakage of information to an American woman.

Saini now works for a US software firm in India. “I do not want to comment on a matter of national security which is currently under investigation,” Saini told The Sunday Express.

IB officials are also examining how Saini was allowed to quit to join a private software firm when he was an important official handling national security issues.

Meanwhile, Delhi Police have arrested NSC secretariat systems analyst S S Paul. The IB is investigating the alleged links between Saini and the US national whom he is said to have “introduced” to Paul last year.

Around the time Paul was picked up, the office of Brigadier Ujjwal Dasgupta, RAW’s Director for Computers and Training, was raided on June 17.

Dasgupta, also involved in the Indo-US Cyber Security Forum, has been on extension in RAW and has now been told that his services are not required. He is also under watch.