Woman diplomat arrested for spying for Pakistan

New Delhi, Apr 27 (PTI) An espionage racket involving
passing of sensitive information to Pakistani intelligence
agencies has been busted with the arrest here of a senior
woman diplomat posted in the Indian High Commission in
Islamabad.

Madhuri Gupta, an IFS-B officer who was Second Secretary
in the mission, was arrested here last week after she was
summoned by India's Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) on the
pretext of discussions over South Asian Association for
Regional Cooperation (SAARC) summit, being held in Thimpu,
official sources said.
"We have reasons to believe that an official in the High
Commission of India in Pakistan had been passing information
to Pakistani intelligence agencies.
"The matter is under investigation. The official is
cooperating with our investigating agencies," MEA spokesman
Vishnu Prakash said in Thimpu.
Officials said this could be the first time that a woman
official of the Foreign Service has been arrested for
allegedly spying for Pakistan and that too during her posting
there.
The 53-year-old official came under the scanner after
she showed "extra-ordinary" interest in areas beyond her role
in the information wing of the mission, the sources said.
Central security agencies then involved senior MEA
officials by briefing them about her activities in Pakistan
which included supplying of sensitive and classified documents
related to Indian activities in that country and Afghanistan,
official sources said.

Following this, Gupta was summoned here and later picked
up from her office. She has been arrested for allegedly
violating provisions of the Official Secrets Act.
She has been extensively questioned by sleuths of
Intelligence Bureau and Delhi Police officials during which
she claimed that she used to get the sensitive information
from another senior diplomat posted in Islamabad, the sources
claimed.
The sources claimed that the woman diplomat had been
allegedly passing information related to policy matters and
movement of people to a Pakistani intelligence man identified
as "Rana".
Gupta was Monday produced before a magistrate who
remanded her to five days of police custody, they said.
The role of another senior official in Islamabad has
also come under the scanner, the sources said, adding Gupta, a
spinster, is alleged to have been taking information from the
senior diplomat and passing to Pakistani spy agencies.
However, it was not immediately clear whether he knew the
woman officer's real designs, the sources said.
A promotee officer of Ministry of External Affairs,
Gupta was working in the Mission for nearly three years and is
reportedly told the investigators that she had been passing
information since 2008.
She was well versed in Urdu and her services were
utilised for translation and interpretation. Earlier she had
had a posting in the Indian Mission in Kuala Lumpur and worked
with the 'India Perspective', a magazine of the External
Publicity wing of MEA.
Home Secretary G K Pillai said Gupta had been passing
information to Pakistani agencies. "She has been arrested," he
said. PTI SKL
MRD