 "A 60-year-old man was arrested in Mumbai in a suspected spy racket last month. News18")
A 60-year-old man, arrested by the Mumbai Police last month for pretending as a scientist of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), had made several foreign visits on a forged passport. Identified as Akhtar Hussaini Qutubuddin Ahmed, the accused is a native of Jamshedpur in Jharkhand, who was arrested from his residence in Mumbai.
His brother, Adil Hussaini (59), has also been arrested. The duo are reportedly suspected of having visited Pakistan and maintained contact with the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).
Let’s take a closer look.
How fake scientist tried to sell ‘nuclear plan’
Akhtar Hussaini was trying to sell an alleged nuclear-related design to companies in Iran, as per an NDTV report.
His 59-year-old brother, Adil Hussaini, was arrested by the Delhi Police last week.
The men have been accused of attempting to sell a purported nuclear design, claiming they have developed a lithium-6 reactor.
They told the Iranian companies that they have made a lithium-6-based fusion reactor prototype to control plasma temperatures. The accused further claimed that they tested a reactor that uses lithium-7, which failed due to “plasma heating failure”.
Scientists linked to the probe said that lithium-7 is not fit for any fusion. They said the prototype mentioned by the accused was built theoretically, but there is no scientific evidence to show its operation.
The accused duped a Mumbai-based Iranian diplomat by posing as a senior BARC scientist. Sources told NDTV that they used fake details and reactor blueprints to defraud the diplomat on the pretext of a “scientific collaboration” or “research partnership”.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsPolice recovered fake passports, Aadhaar, PAN cards and a fake BARC ID from Akhtar. Fourteen maps and purported data related to nuclear weapons were also seized.
One of the fake IDs identified him as Ali Raza Hussain and another as Alexander Palmer.
How brothers fooled their victims
Adil was arrested by the Delhi Police on charges of espionage and running a fake passport racket with his brother.
Before his arrest, Akthar, a resident of Yari Road, Versova, was nabbed by the Mumbai police on October 17 in a suspected spy racket.
During interrogation, Akhtar had claimed that his family, including his brother, were dead.
Akhtar had allegedly forged his identity, creating fake educational degrees, a passport, an Aadhaar card, and a PAN card, Hindustan Times (HT) reported, citing the police.
A 34-year-old colleague, Munazzir Nazimuddin Khan, who forged these documents in 2016-17, was arrested on October 25.
Police said they were also looking for Mohammad Iliyaas Mohammad Ismail from Jamshedpur, who assisted Khan in making Akhtar’s fake documents.
Fascinated by physics and espionage, Akhtar often introduced himself as a “secret agent” or “nuclear expert”. Police said he worked in oil and marketing firms in West Asia before being deported from Dubai in 2004. He was accused of trying to sell “sensitive information” about India, but agencies did not find any wrongdoing.
As per HT, police said that Akhtar posed as a “scientist” to meet foreign nationals, travel abroad, and allegedly extract money by claiming to have access to confidential material.
Adil has been booked for criminal conspiracy, cheating and forgery. The police are also considering invoking espionage charges under the Official Secrets Act against him.
ALSO READ: YouTuber, student and more: Who are the ‘Pakistani spies’ arrested in India?
Foreign travel & funding
Investigators have found that the prime accused, Akhtar Hussaini, in the fake BARC scientist case, travelled abroad several times on a forged passport. As per the police, he went to Iran almost 20 times, Saudi Arabia about 15 times, along with making several trips to Moscow, Russia, and Thailand, reported mid-day.
The brothers travelled to Tehran around March and April, and also visited the Iranian embassies in India and Dubai multiple times, as per NDTV.
The police said the two brothers had multiple bank accounts, including one at a private bank where large foreign transactions going as far back as 2001 were discovered.
Sources told mid-day that the accused started receiving foreign remittances in 1996, allegedly from countries like the United States, Iran, and Iraq. “The transactions post-2001 appear highly irregular, with repeated inflows from unidentified foreign sources,” a Mumbai Crime Branch officer, requesting anonymity, said.
The police say the brothers began receiving foreign funding in 1995, initially in lakhs. After 2000, they started getting paid in crores of rupees.
The Crime Branch contacted the concerned banks, seeking transaction records, KYC details, and information on closed accounts to ascertain the total amount the accused received from abroad.
As per mid-day, officials suspect that Adil may have visited an enemy nation as early as 1999. They are trying to verify his travel and criminal history from 2003 onwards.
Akhtar, meanwhile, is already facing a case in Meerut for “waging war” against the Uttar Pradesh government and “spreading hatred and disaffection”.
With inputs from agencies