Calcutta: Agencies investigating Chinese national Han Junwe, who was arrested on his way to India illegally, say he was a student at a university run by the People’s Liberation Army, where he was studying English.

Han, produced on Saturday in the Malda District Court after his arrest Thursday at the Sultanpur border, has been taken into police custody until June 18.

Police now claim that the Chinese national said during questioning that he graduated in English from Chun Shi Gong Cheng University in China.

The university is reportedly under the control of the PLA of the Chinese military.

Usually, the PLA or the MSS (Chinese Intelligence Service) sponsor bright students to study English and other languages ​​when they want to accept a career in espionage.

An investigator in the case told IANS that Han had shown incredible confidence in trying to reach his Chinese friend, Sun Jiang, in Lucknow, even after he was detained there by ATS for serious accusations.

“It is possible that his superiors, if he was working for the Chinese secret service, ordered him to save his friend, whose interrogation in Lucknow threatened to blow the veil on a well-established spy ring led by a shady business transaction.

Han admitted to returning 1,300 Indian SIM cards to China that would only be of value to an intelligence agency routinely sending agents or a syndicate of crooks.

It is not clear how he managed to get hold of such a large number of SIM cards in the first place. The interrogation also revealed that his associates were hiding the SIM cards in their underwear to smuggle them out of India.

Over 5 lakhs of Indians lost over 150 crore rupees in two months to a national union operated by Chinese fraudsters backed by Indian accomplices offering juicy returns on a multi-level marketing (MLM) campaign online.

This follows the massive Chinese loan apps scam and analysts say it indicates “unusual national vulnerability” to Chinese cyber fraud.

The latter campaign was carried out through two “malicious mobile apps” – Power Bank and EZPlan, Delhi police said.

“Indian intelligence should investigate the national security angle that emerges from these frauds. If these platforms can defraud Indians on such a scale, they can certainly provide secret payments to Chinese agents in India and help them penetrate institutions important to national security, ”said Col. G. Srikumar (ret ), a former intelligence officer with extensive knowledge of Chinese espionage operations.

Eleven people, including a Tibetan woman and two accountants based in Delhi and Gurugram, have been arrested following multiple raids in Delhi-NCR and West Bengal since June 2. The union’s fingerprints have been confirmed in West Bengal, Delhi-NCR, Bengaluru, Odisha, Assam and Surat of Gujarat, police said.

Almost 11 crore of cheated money has been stranded in various bank accounts and online payment gateways operated by union members based in India and China.

Dozens of Chinese and their Indian accomplices have been arrested across India in connection with the multi-state loan applications scam.

Srikumar said Junwe’s connections to Bangladesh should be fully investigated, if necessary with the help of Bangladesh security agencies.

“Obviously he had strong logistical support in Bangladesh,” Srikumar told IANS.

Han, a resident of Hubei in China, was arrested by BSF as he attempted to enter the country through the India-Bangla border in Malda district last Thursday. One of his associates, Sun Jiang, was arrested by UP police earlier this year.

Sun named Han an accomplice during questioning by UP police, and a blue advisory was issued to collect additional information about a person’s identity, location or activities in connection with a crime.

Han told his interrogators shortly after his arrest that his application for an Indian visa was rejected after Sun’s arrest, leaving him with no choice but to try to enter India through Bangladesh or Nepal.

During his initial questioning, Han also told BSF officers that he owned a hotel in Gurugram and had visited India at least four times since 2010. While some hotel staff are Chinese, some Indian nationals were also employed at the hotel, he mentioned.

(IANS)