Army vigil, intel networks foil Pakistan’s constant efforts to spy, collect sand | Jaipur News

JAIPUR: Even after 25 years of nuclear tests conducted at Pokhran Field Firing Range on May 11, 1998, Pakistan still tries its best to spy and collect sand from this place to analyse it.
‘Operation Shakti‘ – the assigned code for the test – was conducted at the tail-end of the firing range. The spot continues to be under tight security. To reach the spot, one must pass through four guarded gates as the entire area is under Indian Army’s vigil.

The firing range of Pokhran is host to army activities and trials throughout the year, making it an exceptionally sensitive area. Targeting Pokhran, ISI has built several sleeper cells that have been trying to gather information. However, strict vigil by police and other Indian security and intelligence agencies has always thwarted ISI’s plans.
Over a dozen spies and suspicious people have been caught for providing information about Pokhran range to ISI in the last few years.
S. Sengathir, ADGP-Intelligence, said that smugglers earlier used mobile phones and social media for spying activities. Now, government officials and common people are targeted through honey traps by ISI’s operatives for strategic information.
He added that last year, also, a drive was launched to unravel the spying activities and many people involved in suspicious activities were caught.
The first nuclear test ‘Operation Smiling Buddha’ was conducted in Pokhran on Buddha Purnima on May 18, 1974. After a gap of 24 years, on May 11, 1998, three more nuclear explosions were conducted. Incidentally, that day also it was Buddha Purnima.
‘Missile man’ and former President Dr APJ Abdul Kalam is said to have lived at Jaisalmer’s Khetolai field firing range secretly for over two months with two other scientists to give final shape to Operation Shakti in 1998. The covert operation took even America’s intelligence agencies by surprise. It was a failure on the part of Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) chief that he did not know about the nuclear tests in India.
The then CIA director George Tenet in his book, ‘At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA’, admitted that the 1998 nuclear tests in India surprised America. He wrote that when CIA received information in 1995 about India preparing for a nuclear test, they forced India to abort the plan. Tenet wrote that the 1998 nuclear test was the biggest failure on their part because that day the western region of India was out of their satellite cameras’ range.