Hyderabad: Intelligence told to keep away from Instagram ‘enemy’ account

Hyderabad: The directorate of military intelligence has advised its personnel to keep away from a “specific suspected enemy spy”, who is believed to be targeting officers and special forces troops through a social networking site.

In a new advisory issued on Monday, the Army intelligence wing, who is tasked with detecting enemy spies, put out an Instagram profile by the name ‘Oyesomya’ along with a picture of the suspected spy. Ironically, minutes after the news broke, the account turned defunct.

“This specific spy has honey-trapped three people (it is not confirmed yet if they were defence personnel) through this account. The modus operandi is that the account will share a chat application and ask the target to download. Once installed, it will discreetly transfer copy of all files in the system. Rest depends on how the trapping goes,” a source told this newspaper.

Asked about this, the serving officers said, “Emerging social media interaction has turned problematic for the Indian Army. The land force has been regularly issuing advisory to its personnel to keep away from unknown accounts. The regular workshop is conducted for all ranked officers to educate them on curbing social interaction on different platforms, as most of the honey-trapped in recent times have reportedly been done through social media platforms. However, in this advisory, the Army intelligence has specified an account, which means there is a concrete proof.”

Between 2015 and 2017, five cases of honey-trapping have been reported. Four of these cases were reported by the Indian Army and one by the Indian Air Force.

In 2018, a junior scientist Nishant Agarwal was arrested from a BrahMos facility in DRDO for leaking sensitive data about India’s defence establishments and plans. He had allegedly shared information with two fake IDs in the name of women being operated from Pakistan. The scientist was targeted on LinkedIn. Earlier, in the same year, however, a BSF Jawan, an alleged spy Achyutanand Mishra, was honey-trapped by Pakistan’s ISI.