The head of a US electronics supplier and three employees have been indicted for shipping controlled US computer technology with missile applications to India, court documents made available yesterday showed.
Cirrus Electronics founder and CEO Parthasarathy Sudarshan will appear in the US District Court in Washington, DC, today to face charges that include export violations, international arms trafficking and conspiracy, according to the indictment.
Sudarshan and Mythili Gopal, the company's international sales managers, were arrested in South Carolina on 23 March, said a US Justice Department spokesman.
The pair are accused of shipping to India heat-resistant computer chips, capacitors, semiconductors, rectifiers and resistors, all of which have applications in missile guidance and firing systems, the indictment said.
It said the items were shipped between 2003 and 2006 to Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, Bharat Dynamics and the Aeronautical Development Establishment, key state agencies in India's missile and aerospace sector.
Exports to those firms in India require licences from the US Department of Commerce on national security grounds.
Sudarshan and Gopal, Indian nationals residing legally in the US, are accused of having used false documents about the end-users to ship the prohibited computer parts to India through Cirrus offices in South Carolina and Singapore.
The indictment said Cirrus made the illicit shipments working closely with "Co-conspirator A", an unidentified Indian government official located in Washington who was not charged.
Two other Cirrus employees, Akn Prasad in Bangalore and Sampath Sundar in Singapore, have also been indicted, the documents showed.
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