A Director in RAW (Research & Analysis Wing), the country’s premier external intelligence agency, has been asked not to return to work, all his files and computers have been seized.

A computer systems analyst in the National Security Council Secretariat, the nation’s top intelligence processing unit, is under arrest, his residence raided.

And now a Navy commander who headed the secretariat’s National Information Security Co-ordination Cell is being questioned in what is turning out to be an unprecedented security breach in the highest levels of the intelligence establishment. The breach, detected only a month ago, involves alleged leakage of sensitive information to foreign agents.

Given that the NSC secretariat is the repository of all intelligence inputs from all security agencies at the Centre, investigators from the Intelligence Bureau are still mapping the damage. Work computers of all top security agency officials in the Government and the military are under the scanner.

Sources said the breach could be widespread, covering RAW, the NSC secretariat and even sections in the Ministry of External Affairs.

In particular focus is the Indo-US Cyber Security Forum, a bilateral programme meant to ease information exchange, and its former coordinator from the Indian side: Mukesh Saini.

Saini, a Navy commander, was until recently the Information Security Specialist in the NSC secretariat and coordinator of the Indo-US forum. Last week, he was subject to intense questioning by IB officials in a plot involving alleged leakage of information to a woman who is a US national.

Saini now works for a leading 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.

... contd.