Woman Diplomat Arrested For Spying For Pakistan

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 in New Delhi last week after she was summoned by Ministry of External Affairs on the pretext of discussions over 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 yesterday 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.

Pakistan on Tuesday night expressed hope that the issue of an Indian woman diplomat being arrested on charges of spying for ISI would not overshadow the expected meeting between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his counterpart Yousuf Raza Gilani here.

"My information is as good as yours because it is based on media reports... You have shared nothing with us," Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said in Thimpu. He said he could not comment as she was an Indian national and an Indian diplomat.

When asked to comment on the issue, Pakistan Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir said, "I have just heard about it. I have no clue about it."

Queried whether the issue could overshadow the meeting expected between Singh and Gilani here on the margins of the SAARC Summit, a cautious Bashir said, "as of now, nothing is scheduled. (But) I hope that if interaction takes place (between the Prime Ministers), nothing is going to overshadow that." PTI

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