Hill police claim ISI arrests in Kurseong

Kurseong, May 19: Darjeeling police today arrested two suspected ISI agents along with two of their links from Kurseong. Police have also detained three other people, one of them an upper division clerk in the army’s 33 Corps stationed at Sukna. The arrests were made after a tip-off from the Rajasthan police following a recent arrest of an alleged ISI spy, B.K. Sinha, who was working as an upper divisional clerk of the Indian Army in Jaipur. Sinha was posted in Siliguri till 2011 before being transferred to Jaipur. Kunal Aggarawal, the superintendent of police of Darjeeling, said: “We have arrested two ISI agents and two other linkmen from the area under the Garidhura police station in Kurseong subdivision this afternoon. The arrests were made after a tip-off from our counterparts in Rajasthan.” The SP added: “The people have contacts with ISI agents in Nepal.” Sources in the police said of the four arrested, Maghan Bahadur Singh, 54, and Meshan Souriya, 54, were believed to be ISI recruits. While Singh originally hailed from Uttar Pradesh, he had married a girl from Chotta Adalpur and was residing in the area ever since he was dismissed from the army in 2008. Souriya, the other ISI agent, hails from Panighatta tea garden and is suspected to be the ring leader who formed the group in 2008, a police source said. “One of the arrested is a ex-army driver who had been earlier arrested in a murder case and also for stealing a vehicle by Kurseong police,” said Aggarwal. Souriya is believed to be involved in smuggling. Panighatta is near the Indo-Nepal border. An officer investigating the case said: “Souriya seems to have developed the network as he was involved in smuggling. Since the arrests have just been made and five government agencies, including the military intelligence is interrogating them, full details are yet to emerge,” said an official. Souriya is believed to have recruited Dhan Kumar Pradhan, 42, of Panighatta bazaar and Gopal Khati alias Biswakarma, 39, a resident of Naxalbari as their link. “The link would physically go to Bhadrapur to meet ISI operatives in Kathmandu to pass on the information. They have told us that the ISI operatives in Kathmandu would pay Rs 25,000 for each information they would provide. We have recovered some documents, which we are verifying along with six mobile phones from the possession of the four arrested,” said another official. “They had been working for the past three years.” The links had no regular jobs and would sustain their family by doing odd-jobs in their area. “All the four were arrested from their residence and they had no idea that a raid were being conducted in the area,” Agarrawal said. Darjeeling district shares international borders with Nepal and Bhutan. The air force is based in Bagdogra and Hashimara in the plains while the army is stationed at Sukna, Sikkim and Darjeeling among other places of the region. The police said the four had been booked under various sections of the Official Secrets Act and for sedition. Sources maintain that the National Investigating Agency has also been informed about the arrests. An investigating officer said that Mesha was a leader of a ill based political party of the Panighatta area. “We are still to investigate whether Mesha used his political influence to gather information,” said a source.