Dehra (Kangra), May 30 —A 20-year-old college dropout from Himachal Pradesh’s Kangra district has been arrested on suspicion of espionage, following the recovery of sensitive content on his phone that could allegedly pose a threat to India’s sovereignty and integrity, police said on Thursday.
The accused, identified as Abhishek Bhardwaj of Sukahar village in the Dehra sub-division, was arrested from his residence on Wednesday after a period of surveillance.
“We acted on specific intelligence and had kept him under watch for several days,” said Mayank Chaudhary, Superintendent of Police, Dehra. “Sensitive videos and photographs were recovered from his mobile phone, which has been seized and sent to the Forensic Science Laboratory for further examination.”
A special police team, led by the sub-divisional police officer of Dadaseeba, had been monitoring Bhardwaj’s online activities and contacts. While officials have yet to confirm direct involvement in espionage, preliminary findings suggest he was in touch with several Pakistani individuals through social media platforms.
Bhardwaj was booked under Section 152 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) and produced before a local court on Thursday. He has been remanded to five days of police custody.
“This is the first such arrest in Himachal Pradesh under the ongoing national crackdown on espionage activities,” a senior officer noted.
The arrest is part of a broader counterintelligence operation—Operation Sindoor—launched by Indian security agencies on May 7. The operation was initiated in the wake of the April 22 terror attack in Pahalgam, Jammu and Kashmir, which left 26 people dead.
Since then, at least seven individuals have been arrested in Punjab and Haryana for allegedly leaking sensitive information to Pakistani handlers.
