NIA Court Jails Two More in Vizag Navy Espionage Case to Bring Convictions to Eight

Overview

• Ashok Kumar and Vikas Kumar were sentenced by the NIA Special Court in Visakhapatnam to five years and eleven months' simple imprisonment under Section 18 of the UA(P) Act and Section 3 of the Official Secrets Act.
• Each also faces an additional one-year simple imprisonment if a ₹5,000 fine is not paid, according to the court order.
• With these sentences, eight of the 15 people arrested in the case have been convicted, while trials for the remaining accused continue.
• The two men were arrested in December 2019 from Mumbai, Maharashtra, and Karwar, Karnataka, respectively.
• The NIA filed a chargesheet against 14 accused in June 2020 and a supplementary chargesheet against one more in March 2021, and the agency says it is still probing the broader conspiracy.