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.