A 60-year-old man arrested for posing as a scientist of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) received crores in foreign funds for exchanging sensitive nuclear data, sources told NDTV on Monday.
Akhtar Hussaini was arrested last week by Mumbai Police for travelling across the country while falsely claiming to be a BARC scientist. More than 10 maps and purported data related to nuclear weapons were also seized from Hussaini, a resident of Jharkhand’s Jamshedpur.
Several fake passports, Aadhaar and PAN cards and a fake BARC ID were also recovered from him. While one of the IDs identified him as Ali Raza Hussain, the other named him Alexander Palmer.
His brother, Adil, was also arrested in Delhi.
According to Mumbai Police’s Crime Branch sources, the Hussaini brothers began receiving foreign funding in 1995.
Initially, they were paid lakhs of rupees, but after 2000, they were given crores.
It is suspected that this money was paid in exchange for secret blueprints related to BARC and other nuclear plants.
During the probe, the police also found a private bank account in the name of Akhtar Hussaini, which had seen suspicious transactions.
The police have now requested complete transaction details from the bank to determine the exact amount and source of funding.
The two brothers also closed several other bank accounts that they used.
The police are examining records of old accounts to establish a complete money trail.
It is also suspected that the two brothers visited Pakistan and may have links to the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).
Akhtar had been changing his identity and living in disguise. In 2004, he was deported from Dubai after claiming to be a “scientist possessing classified documents”.
He sold an ancestral house in Jharkhand in 1996 but continued to obtain fake documents with the help of his old contacts, sources said.
Adil had then introduced him to Munazzil Khan, a Jharkhand resident who made two fake passports for them in the names of Hussaini Mohammad Adil and Nasimuddin Syed Adil Hussaini.
The address mentioned on the passports belonged to their house in Jamshedpur that was sold nearly 30 years ago.
The police suspect that the two brothers used these forged documents and fake identities to travel abroad.