A 27-year-old Thane engineer, Ravindra Verma, has been arrested for leaking highly sensitive information about Indian warships and submarines to Pakistan. According to officials, the engineer had been in contact with a Pakistani spy who posed as a woman on Facebook.
Verma, who lived in Kalwa and worked at a private defence tech firm, had access to the Naval Dockyard in South Mumbai. He was regularly allowed aboard Indian naval ships and submarines for professional work. But what he did next went far beyond his job profile—and straight into treason.
How It All Started
This wasn’t some high-tech hacking plot. It started with a Facebook friend request.
In 2024, Verma received messages from profiles named “Ispreet” and “Payal Sharma.” Both claimed to be Indian women working on a naval research project. They weren’t. They were Pakistani agents.
Verma took the bait. He began passing classified naval information—sometimes as sketches, sometimes as voice notes. Since phones weren’t allowed inside the dockyard, he memorised details and shared them later.
For every leak, he got paid. The money came from both Indian and foreign bank accounts.
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Fully Aware, Fully Complicit
Authorities made it clear: Verma knew exactly what he was doing.
“He was fully aware of his actions and the recipient of the sensitive information,” a senior official told News18. The payments he received were not small talk—they were his incentive to betray the country.
He wasn’t manipulated. He was monetized.
The Absurdity of It All
You’d think leaks would require James Bond-level operations. Instead, it’s a Facebook catfish.
In the age of DeepFakes, we’re still getting duped by basic fakes. How does a defence tech employee fall for this? Because greed, lust, and ego don’t need complex tools. Just a friend request.
India’s defence ecosystem needs stronger safeguards—not just outside, but inside. No naval secrets should be this easy to steal. And no engineer with access should be this easy to fool.
The Thane engineer may have been caught. But the real leak was in our system.
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