The premier agency under the Department of Defence Research and Development in the Ministry of Defence of the Government of India, DRDO has asked 5,000-odd scientists/employees to tread carefully on social media.
The circular on “cyber discipline” came weeks after the arrest of Pradeep Kurulkar, a DRDO scientist at the rank of additional secretary, GoI. Kurulkar, investigators say, fell for a Pakistani “honey-trap”.
According to the reports of TOI, The scientist is believed to have had access to over 50 DRDO establishments and have sensitive information hence the DRDO seems to be worried.
The DRDO officials are asking the employees not to take calls from unknown numbers and additionally to avoid social media platforms.
The officials said, “All the personnel have to be responsible enough on social media and other apps as many such operatives have been trying to target individual officers using WhatsApp numbers mostly from outside the country.”
Why is the Advisory been issued?
Dr Pradeep Kurulkar was arrested by the Maharashtra police’s Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) on May 3. He is in judicial custody till May 29.
Dr Pradeep Kurulkar was a director at one of the Defence Research Development Organisation (DRDO) labs in Pune.
He was arrested on charges of providing confidential information to a Pakistani agent. He was allegedly honey-trapped by a woman whom he had befriended on social media last year.
“We have been issuing advisories and holding lectures by experts on maintaining cyber discipline but this incident has happened,” senior DRDO officials said.
“After the arrest of senior scientist Pradeep Kurulkar, we have issued a strong advisory to all our personnel to maintain cyber discipline like not taking calls from unknown numbers of foreign numbers,” they said.
