In a significant legal development, the Nagpur Bench of the Bombay High Court has overturned the life imprisonment sentence handed to former BrahMos Aerospace senior scientist Nishant Agarwal, clearing him of the most serious espionage charges. The court's ruling paves the way for his imminent release from custody.
Court's Verdict: Major Charges Dropped, Lesser Conviction Upheld
A division bench comprising Justices Anil Kilor and Pravin Patil delivered the judgment on December 1, 2025. The bench set aside Agarwal's conviction under Section 66(f) of the Information Technology Act (cyber terrorism) and key sections of the Official Secrets Act (OSA) related to espionage. The court found that the prosecution failed to prove that any sensitive missile data was actually transmitted to Pakistani intelligence agencies or their operatives.
However, the court upheld his conviction under Section 5(1)(d) of the OSA for the unauthorized possession of classified documents on a personal device. For this offence, he was sentenced to three years of imprisonment. Since Agarwal has been in custody since his arrest in October 2018 – a period exceeding six years – he has already served this sentence in full.
The Case and the Prosecution's Failed Claims
The case, which sent shockwaves through India's defence establishment, began with Agarwal's arrest in 2018. A Nagpur court had sentenced him to life imprisonment in 2024 after he was accused of leaking sensitive information about the BrahMos supersonic cruise missile system to Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).
The prosecution alleged that Agarwal was honey-trapped by Pakistani operatives using fake Facebook profiles named "Neha Sharma" and "Pooja Ranjan," which were traced to Islamabad. It was claimed that malware on his laptop siphoned sensitive data to foreign servers. Government Pleader Adv Sanjay Doifode stated that the High Court found no technical evidence to support these claims of data transfer to a third party or enemy state.
"We alleged that he either transferred the data to them, or they extracted it from his device... However, it could not be proven that this secret information was actually transferred elsewhere," Adv Doifode explained to The Indian Express.
Profile of the Accused and Case Implications
Nishant Agarwal was a senior system engineer at BrahMos Aerospace, a crucial joint venture between India's DRDO and Russia's NPO Mashinostroyenia. An NIT Kurukshetra graduate and a recipient of the DRDO's Young Scientist Award, he was considered a bright mind working on one of India's most strategic defence assets.
His arrest marked the first espionage case to hit BrahMos Aerospace. The High Court's judgment underscores the critical distinction between procedural violations—such as moving 19 classified files to a personal device—and the proven intent to aid an enemy state, which the prosecution could not establish.
With the life term and a separate 14-year rigorous imprisonment under the IT Act quashed, and the lesser three-year sentence already served, Agarwal is now set to be released. The judgment highlights the high burden of proof required in cases of espionage under stringent laws like the Official Secrets Act.
