A former Director General (DG) of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) is believed to have moved confidential company documents out of the premises of BrahMos Aerospace, according to DRDO Vigilance Department reports accessed exclusively by Firstpost.
The documents say that there is an instance that “confirms that there are definite chances of movement of important company documents out of BrahMos premises” by Sudhir Mishra, former DG, DRDO.
Mishra retired as the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Managing Director (MD) of BrahMos Aerospace on 30 November, 2021.
How Sudhir Mishra allegedly moved the documents out
On the afternoon of his retirement day, a logistics company named Big Logistics India Pvt Ltd, was hired to take out roughly 40 boxes of various sizes along with several documents. The material was taken out of the company’s headquarters without an “out pass”, the Vigilance Department report claimed.
Firstpost accessed the entries made for Sultan, a person understood to be associated with the logistics firm, in a register.
Almost a month after his superannuation, on 28 December, 2021, Mishra, a senior DRDO scientist, returned “a number of files, company documents, and information”. The materials he returned contained a file that was labelled ‘CONFIDENTIAL’.
The returning of the documents resulted in the security breach coming to light. That led to an investigation detailing a significant lapse in security protocols at the firm.
Responses from DRDO, Sudhir Mishra
The Directorate of Public Interface (DPI), DRDO, told Firstpost that they had received a complaint against Mishra. They acknowledged that a fact Finding Inquiry Committee was formed by Secretary, Directorate of Defense Research & Development (DDR&D) and Chairman, DRDO based on the complaint.
“However, the committee didn’t find any evidence to back the allegation levied,” DPI DRDO said.
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Exclusive: DRDO responds to Firstpost story on ‘security breach’ at BrahMos HQ by ex-DG
Mishra told _Firstpost, “_The allegations in the report mentioned in the story are all false. Why will I return something? I had nothing with me which I am supposed to return […] I have worked in government of India for 38 years, and I know the value of each and every paper. Not a single paper that has been labelled ‘classified’, not a single official paper has gone out with me. What I have taken out is my personal belongings which everybody does when you retire.”
He pointed out that every government organisation keeps an inventory of all its items. “So there has to be some loss or write-off in the inventory… where is it? There’s no loss. If something is missing, it should be missing from the inventory. Loss to the exchequer should be mentioned.”
He called the allegations an attempt to damage his reputation. “When you lead an organisation for so many years, there are people who are affected, some times favourably, some times adversely. So once you depart they try to create stories and rumours and do this kind of reputational damage,” he said.
He emphasised that “the DRDO Fact finding committee has formally investigated the matter and refuted all allegations after discussing with all concerned officials.” He said that the adverse reports are being circulated now as DRDO is about to declare results of Consultancy position of Dr Raja Rammana Chair, for which he might be in the selected list.
BrahMos spokesperson did not respond to Firstpost’s requests for comment.
Security lapses
Although the investigation committee was told that no material had gone out of the BrahMos Aerospace office, there were various instances of “unnoticed and undocumented” items being removed from these premises.
The CCTV footage for a critical 15-day period, the documents show, were found to be missing. There were lapses in maintaining a mandatory 90-day backup of CCTV footage, too.Moreover, the “out pass” register of returnable and non-returnable items for 90 days was not very well-maintained. The data in both the registers looked to be mixed.
A trend of security breaches at DRDO
In the past couple of years, there have been quite a few instances of data breaches and security lapses surrounding DRDO scientists.
In 2023, Pradeep Kurulkar, a senior DRDO scientist was sacked after investigations suggested that he was leaking information to suspected Pakistani spies. Kurulkar had reportedly been honey-trapped virtually.
A year prior to that, a 29-year-old native of Telangana, was arrested on charges of leaking sensitive information about one of India’s weapons development programmes to a Pakistani spy. The man was an engineer with the DRDO laboratory in Hyderabad.
In 2018, there were reports of two scientists from the DRDO being detained by the Anti-terrorism Squad (ATS) for leaking confidential documents to a suspected Pakistan-based ISI agent. They, too, were suspected to have been targets of honey trapping.
This story has been updated to accommodate the response by DRDO and Sudhir Mishra. DRDO responded on May 2, while Mishra responded on May 3. Firstpost’s original story was published on May 1.
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