Kolkata Police officials suspect these three links acted as "information carriers" and smuggled in money through hawala channels. (Representational photo)
Three more persons, belonging to countries bordering India, were found to have links to the two arrested suspected ISI agents in Kolkata, an initial probe into the matter revealed, a senior police officer said.
The names of the three persons, belonging to Nepal, Bangladesh and Myanmar, surfaced during interrogation of the arrested suspected Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agent Akhtar Khan, a senior officer of the Special Task Force (STF) of the Kolkata Police said.
Though the role of these three persons were yet to be established, Kolkata Police officials suspected that they acted as "information carriers" and smuggled in money through hawala channels.
Talking about why Akhtar's brother Zafar was arrested, the STF officer said that there were discrepancies in his statement during his interrogation.
"We had asked him a few questions in connection with his brother. But he failed to answer to our satisfaction following which we arrested him," the officer said.
It was learnt that Zafar, like his brother, had gone to Pakistan in the 1980s and after staying there for around 20 years returned to India.
Several documents, including an ATM card of a Pakistani bank, were also recovered from their Collin Street house, the officer said, but did not divulge the name of its holder.
According to a highly-placed source in the STF, the documents recovered from their Collin Street residence were "quite suspicious" containing defence-related information of the country.
"Both the brothers have incriminating roles in this matter. We are verifying the details and running a check of all the information so far received regarding them," the officer said.