Ashley Tellis (File photo)

A prominent Indian-origin scholar, Ashley Tellis, who was arrested by the FBI in the United States over allegations of retaining classified documents and meeting with Chinese officials, is now denying the charges against him, his lawyers said on Wednesday, according to AFP.Ashley Tellis, 64, who held senior positions under former president George W. Bush and continued as an unpaid advisor to the State Department, was arrested on Saturday and faces up to 10 years in prison.“Ashley J. Tellis is a widely respected scholar and senior policy advisor,” his lawyers, Deborah Curtis and John Nassikas, said in a statement.“We will be vigorously contesting the allegations brought against him, specifically any insinuation of his operating on behalf of a foreign adversary,” they said.A criminal affidavit made public Tuesday stated that Tellis entered the State Department late on September 25 and appeared to print from a secret document on US Air Force techniques.The affidavit also alleged that Tellis met repeatedly with Chinese officials at a restaurant in the Washington suburb of Fairfax, Virginia, and that at one dinner he appeared to leave a manila envelope.The charges announced by the Justice Department relate to improper handling of documents rather than the meetings, with an FBI special agent saying a search of his home uncovered more than 1,000 pages of top-secret or secret documents.Tellis has been a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a leading Washington think tank, which said Wednesday that he has been placed on administrative leave.A naturalized American originally from India, Tellis helped negotiate the Bush administration’s civil nuclear cooperation deal with India, a landmark step in strengthening relations between the world’s two largest democracies.In recent years, however, Tellis has emerged as a leading contrarian in Washington on India, arguing that New Delhi’s interests were not aligned with the US on a range of issues, including Ukraine.