Roorkee’s young scientist Nishant Agarwal has finally been cleared of sedition charges after eight painful years. Nishant, a former scientist at BrahMos Aerospace, Nagpur, was accused of leaking confidential missile technology to Pakistan. On 1 December 2025, a division bench of the Bombay High Court (Nagpur Bench) acquitted him, removing the stigma that had destroyed his life and shattered his family.
Only 27 years old at the time, Nishant was working on the BrahMos missile project and had just received the Young Scientist Award from DRDO when police from Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh ATS arrested him on 8 October 2018. He had been married barely five and a half months. While Nishant spent eight years behind bars, his wife and mother lived what they describe as an “undeclared prison” outside their home.
Speaking at their residence in Nehru Nagar, Roorkee, Nishant’s wife Kshitija Agarwal recounted the ordeal. She said that at around 4:30 AM, ATS officers arrived at their home, seized laptops and mobile phones, and took Nishant into custody. For the family, everything collapsed in a single morning. Nine months later, the first chargesheet was filed in Nagpur court. For nearly six years they waited for justice, hopeful that forensic examinations showed no evidence of leaked data.
However, on 3 June 2024, the Nagpur sessions court sentenced Nishant to life imprisonment, a moment Kshitija describes as one that “snatched the ground from beneath our feet.” The family appealed to the High Court, which ultimately ruled that no data was ever transferred and that only irrelevant training material had been found on the seized devices.
Nishant’s mother Ritu Agarwal said she survived only on faith: “I was breathing, but I was not alive.” She recalled how neighbours viewed them with suspicion, while relatives stood beside them and believed in Nishant’s innocence. Kshitija added that Nishant never allowed their son to visit him in jail, confident that one day he would return home free.
With the High Court verdict clearing his name, the family says they are finally able to breathe again.
