ISI operatives recruited women and minors to install solar-powered CCTV cameras at Delhi Cantonment and railway stations, streaming live footage to Pakistan. India responded by ordering a nationwide audit of all CCTV cameras — apparently nobody had thought to check who was installing them.
In what reads like a spy thriller written by a municipal planning committee, Ghaziabad police announced on March 14 that they had busted an ISI-linked espionage ring that had planted solar-powered CCTV cameras at sensitive installations across North India, including the Delhi Cantonment and Sonipat railway stations. The cameras streamed real-time footage to handlers in Pakistan via cellular networks. The recruitment strategy was peak ISI creativity: they enlisted women, minors, and young adults in their early 20s to do the actual installation work, presumably because nobody suspects a teenager of conducting international espionage at a railway platform. Twenty-two people have been arrested so far. The Ministry of Home Affairs responded by ordering a pan-India audit of all CCTV cameras at railway stations, cantonments, highways, and military routes — a move that raises the uncomfortable question of how an entire surveillance infrastructure existed without anyone checking who owned it.