Jaipur, May 29: Security agencies have arrested a government employee in Jaisalmer on charges of espionage. The accused, Shakoor Khan, currently employed as a clerk at the Mangalia District Employment Office had recently travelled to Pakistan without obtaining departmental permission.

He was formerly the personal secretary of ex-minister Saleh Mohammad in 2008, during his tenure as the MLA from Pokhran.

According to reports, the authorities discovered several Pakistani phone numbers in his phone which Shakoor Khan couldn’t explain. He also confessed that he had travelled to Pakistan at least seven times in recent years.

Officials revealed that acting on Intelligence inputs, security personnel detained Shakoor Khan from the employment office and began questioning him regarding his visit.

Sources confirmed that Shakoor, a resident of Mangalia Ki Dhani in Baroda village, is being interrogated by the Joint Investigation Committee.

Multiple agencies are collaborating to probe the matter further as Shakoor Khan was found to have phone numbers associated with Pakistan stored on his device, officials said.

The arrest comes amid heightened security across India following ‘Operation Sindoor’, launched in response to the recent Pahalgam terror attack in which 26 people, mostly civilians, were killed.

Given the strategic sensitivity of Jaisalmer due to its proximity to the Indo-Pak border, agencies are closely monitoring all suspicious activities. As of now, no official statement has been released by authorities regarding the case.

The Joint Investigation Committee is questioning Shakoor Khan, who was caught from the employment office on Wednesday night.

Various investigation agencies are working together to get to the bottom of this matter, said officials, adding, “Shakoor is being questioned for travelling to Pakistan without informing the department despite being a government employee.”

“There were inputs about Shakoor Khan that he could be involved in spying for Pakistan. He was on surveillance following inputs and was detained last night,” media reports quoted an official as saying.

A joint interrogation was conducted in Jaisalmer following which the team left for Jaipur with Shakoor Khan.

Bagdogra, May 29: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday said the brutal terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pahalgam was an assault on humanity itself, but India’s swift and precise response through Operation Sindoor has dealt a decisive blow to terrorism and exposed Pakistan on the global stage.

Addressing the 50th-anniversary celebrations of Sikkim’s statehood virtually from Bagdogra, PM Modi strongly condemned the Pahalgam attack, in which Pakistan-linked terrorists killed 26 people.

“Tourism is not just about leisure, it is a celebration of diversity. But what the terrorists did in Pahalgam was not just an attack on Indians; it was an attack on the soul of humanity, on the spirit of brotherhood,” the Prime Minister said.

Stressing the national unity in the face of terror, he said, “The terrorists shattered the happiness of many families; they conspired to divide us as Indians. Yet today, the entire world is witnessing a stronger, more united India.”

In a firm tone, PM Modi said India responded to terrorism and its sponsors with “unwavering unity and sent a strong, clear message”.

“They tried to wipe the sindoor off the heads of our daughters, leaving them in grief, but we responded with Operation Sindoor, delivering a fitting blow to terrorism,” he said.

Under Operation Sindoor, the Indian Armed Forces launched targeted precision strikes on nine high-value terror infrastructures located in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

PM Modi noted that while these hubs were dismantled, Pakistan retaliated by attacking Indian military, civilian, and religious sites.

“When the terror hubs were destroyed, Pakistan, in fear, tried to attack our citizens and armed forces. But in that too, Pakistan was exposed. We destroyed several of their air bases and proved that India can do whatever it wants with precision and promptness,” he said.

Earlier, in one of his speeches, the Prime Minister reiterated that Operation Sindoor is not over and is the “new normal” in India’s fight against Pakistan-sponsored cross-border terrorism.

Kolkata, May 29: A group of ‘untainted’ teachers in West Bengal, who lost their jobs following a Supreme Court order last month in the cash-for-job case, reached Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s official residence on Thursday morning to meet her and update her on their condition.

However, the teachers, who turned up at the Chief Minister’s residence without an appointment, did not get the chance to meet Mamata Banerjee.

They were taken away by the security personnel deployed near the Chief Minister’s official residence at Kalighat in South Kolkata.

A city police officer said that on Thursday morning, suddenly, a group of five teachers, all women, arrived at the doorsteps of the Chief Minister’s residence with a plea to meet her, without a prior appointment.

The police personnel there denied them entry and explained to them that meeting the Chief Minister without a prior appointment was not possible.

However, the women teachers started arguing with them.

Soon the security personnel, with the assistance of female cops, first detained them, put them into a police van, and took them away from near the Chief Minister’s residence. They were taken to the nearby Kalighat Police Station for interrogation.

The five detained teachers are Sahani Naznin, Rupa Karmakar, Shilpi Chakraborty, Nur Amina Gulshan and Sangeeta Saha.

During the altercations with the police personnel, Saha told media persons that since they did not have the time to seek an appointment, they came directly to the Chief Minister’s residence.

“Since the beginning, we had been seeking appointments with the Chief Minister. We had a hope that the Chief Minister would understand what we had been going through,” she said.

Earlier this week, the Chief Minister announced that the West Bengal School Service Commission’s (WBSSC) notification for fresh recruitments to vacant posts for teaching and non-teaching jobs will be issued on May 30.

She stated that even the ‘untainted’ teachers, who had lost their jobs following a Supreme Court order in the cash-for-job case, would have to appear for the written examination for recruitment.

However, insiders from the state secretariat said that the notification might be issued by Thursday evening.

On April 3, a Supreme Court Bench while upholding a previous order of the Calcutta High Court, which annulled 25,753 school appointments made through the WBSSC, also directed the state government to start a fresh recruitment process by issuing notifications or advertisements for the same by May 31.

Since the teachers who had got their jobs without paying any money had been insisting that they would not appear for a fresh written examination, the Chief Minister clarified that after the Supreme Court’s order, there was no other option before them but to appear for the test.