Updated: September 19, 2020 7:25:19 am
Rajeev Sharma was arrested on September 14.
The Delhi Police Special Cell arrested a city-based strategic affairs analyst and author under the Official Secrets Act (OSA) on the grounds that he had been found in possession of classified defense-related documents.
Rajeev Sharma, who previously worked with United News of India, The Tribune, and Sakaal Times, and most recently wrote an article for the Chinese newspaper Global Times, was arrested on September 14.
DCP (Special Cell) Sanjeev Kumar Yadav said: “He is a resident of Pitampura and was arrested by the Southwest rank of the Delhi Police Special Cell. He was presented to the magistrate the following day, after which he was taken into police custody for six days. It was discovered that he was in possession of some classified defense-related documents. The investigation of the case is ongoing ”.
Sharma has a YouTube channel called ‘Rajeev Kishkindha’, which has 11,900 subscribers. On the day of her arrest, she uploaded two videos. One of them is an eight-minute video titled ‘China can still do mischief #IndiaChinaFaceOff’, in which he says: “Despite an agreement … reached between the foreign ministers of India and China, the road to peace is still heavily undermined. There is still no guarantee that everything will develop according to the script reached between the two foreign ministers in Moscow. “
The other video is four minutes long, in Hindi, on the state of the media, which he tweeted with the caption: “The state of the Indian media today is pathetic. It was supposed to be a watchdog. Instead, he has become a government lap dog. “
Late Friday night, Sharma’s Twitter account, which has more than 5,300 followers, displayed the following message: “Caution: this account is temporarily restricted. You are seeing this warning because there has been some unusual activity on this account. “
On September 7, Sharma wrote an article for the Global Times, titled ‘A Roadmap of Rapprochement for Beijing and New Delhi Benefits Both Countries’, in which he said: “The constant deterioration of bilateral relations since the night of the 5 May, when the confrontation began, it has practically evaporated all the diplomatic achievements of the last years in one blow. The current crisis is the greatest threat to the normal ties between the two parties since 1962. It is a situation in which both lose. Their common goal must be to build a better and peaceful future for their peoples and not a military build-up against each other. “
According to Sharma’s LinkedIn account, he has written many books. In May 2014, he wrote an article for Firstpost titled “Why Former IB Director Ajit Doval Is The Best The NSA Could Have In India”, in which he mentioned his “thousands of interactions with Doval”.
In the article, he wrote: “Doval’s appointment should send nervousness to Pakistan, particularly people like Dawood Ibrahim, Hafiz Saeed and Sayeed Salahuddin.”
Sharma was one of the people who said last year that they had been alerted to the surveillance of their phones through Israeli spyware Pegasus.
“I received a WhatsApp message at 9.36pm on October 29, saying that my phone could have been at risk. The first call I received was from the Canadian based NGO 15-20 days ago… They advised me to change my phone, ”Sharma told The Indian Express at the time.
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