‘External agency hacked Indian Army officer’s PC’

NEW DELHI - The computer of an Indian Army officer posted in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands has been hacked by “an external agency”, a defence officer said Thursday.

“It is a case of computer hacking through an external agency. The matter is under investigation,” army spokesperson Colonel S. Om Singh said.

The spokesman said there was no evidence to suggest an “espionage case” involving the officer, who is a major.

Denying that the officer was called to Delhi and kept under the safe custody, Singh said: “He is on duty in his parent unit.”

The major has come under the scanner of security agencies in the wake of the alleged transfer of data from his computer to Pakistani agencies.

The tip-off about the hacking, according to sources, had come from a US intelligence agency.

The sources said a picture of a serving Indian brigadier attending a training programme in the US was sent to Pakistan from an IP address that was tracked to the computer of the major.

A report in a national daily Thursday said that the officer was suspected to be involved in espionage activities — the second such case after an Indian diplomat in the high commission in Islamabad, Madhuri Gupta, was arrested last month for allegedly passing on sensitive information to Pakistani spy agencies.