*New Delhi: *A senior Indian Air Force officer has been taken into custodyafter he was accused of passing on classified information to a woman he hadreportedly befriended on Facebook.
Sources told NDTV that the woman was likely to have been a spy who appearedto have honey-trapped the Group Captain-rank officer, who was based at theAir Force Headquarters in Delhi.
Classified information, sources said, had possibly been routed throughFacebook and WhatsApp.
The matter came out during routine counter-intelligence surveillance andthe officer was taken into custody following an investigation by the IAF’sCentral Security and Investigation team, sources said.
The officials are trying to understand the extent to which classified datahas been leaked. They are also trying to gauge whether others have beeninvolved in the information leakage.
There are very strict guidelines on the use of social media in the armedforces that restricts soldiers from sharing their identity, rank, postingand other professional details. They are also not allowed to postphotographs that show them wearing uniform.
In December 2015, the Delhi Police arrested a former Air Force officer forallegedly passing sensitive information to operatives suspected to bebacked by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence or ISI.