A senior Indian Air Force officer has been taken into custody after he was accused of passing on classified information to a woman he had reportedly befriended on Facebook.

Sources told NDTV that the woman was likely to have been a spy who appeared to have honey-trapped the Group Captain-rank officer, who was based at the Air Force Headquarters in Delhi.

Classified information, sources said, had possibly been routed through Facebook and WhatsApp.The matter came out during routine counter-intelligence surveillance and the officer was taken into custody following an investigation by the IAF’s Central Security and Investigation team, sources said.