Mumbai, Dec. 16: A Pakistani spy has confessed to passing on sensitive information about the Indian Army to the ISI.

Mahendra Kumar Rishi, arrested in Jodhpur on Wednesday by the Intelligence Bureau (IB), revealed during interrogation that he would send information about troop movement and strategic locations besides maps and photographs of army formations in Pune and Jaisalmer.

“Mahendra Kumar Rishi, a Pakistani national, had been staying in India illegally. He entered India through Bangladesh in 2003 and stopped by in Calcutta before moving base to Pune.? We found an expired Bangladeshi visa on him,” said a senior IB official.

A 28-year-old arts graduate, Rishi was trained under the ISI in Hyderabad in the Sindh province of Pakistan, where he used to live.

In Pune, bureau sources said, Rishi stayed in a hotel opposite the railway station and would send information to his ISI “handler”, Major Zaid, from a nearby cyber caf?.

Some of his mails caught the eye of the bureau’s cyber sleuths and they tracked him to Pune. But when a team landed in the city, Rishi had left for Rajasthan.

The sleuths then laid a trap. “We hacked his handler’s e-mail ID and lured Rishi to meet ISI contacts in Jodhpur?. When he came to the appointed place in Jodhpur, we got him,” said the official.

The bureau team, along with Rajasthan police, arrested Rishi from a cyber cafe in the Sardarpur area of Jodhpur.

Rishi has allegedly been travelling across Rajasthan, gathering information on military establishments and airports. Over the last six months, he reportedly made several trips to Ajmer, Jodhpur, Jaipur and Barmer.

His focus, however, was on the South-Western Command headquartered in Jodhpur and the Southern Command headquarters in Pune. He also went to Ahmedabad as part of his assignment.

A Pune-based doctor and a woman named Neha are believed to have been his aides. “We are interrogating him and he has more vital information up his sleeve,” said a bureau source.

Rishi holds a UTI Bank account in Bareilly ? with an international ATM card ? where he would receive money from Pakistan’s Muslim Commercial Bank.

The South Western Command came into being less than six months ago to give the Indian Army’s armoured corps strategic advantage over southern Pakistan, which also includes Sindh.

Rishi has been sent to the police headquarters in Jaipur for interrogation where he will be produced before the designated court, police said.