A junior diplomat in the Indian High Commission in Islamabad has been arrested by the special cell of the Delhi police on the charge of leaking sensitive national secrets to Pakistani intelligence agencies.
The official, Madhuri Gupta, was produced in a court here on Monday and remanded to five-day police custody.
Ms. Gupta, who was posted as Second Secretary in the Press and Information Wing of the High Commission, was picked up here for questioning four days ago.
She was interrogated by intelligence officials for a couple of days and arrested under the Official Secrets Act after the agencies were “convinced” that she had leaked sensitive information.
Said to be an expert in Urdu, the middle-aged official was working with the Information Wing for the past couple of years.
She came under the scanner of intelligence agencies a year ago, as she had allegedly been showing interest in matters beyond her brief.
An Indian Foreign Service Branch ‘B' official, Ms. Gupta was called to the capital for consultations on the summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation in Bhutan and then arrested.
Another official involved?
PTI reports:
Sources claimed the woman diplomat had allegedly been passing information on policy matters and the movement of people to a Pakistani intelligence man identified as “Rana.”
The role of another senior official in Islamabad also came under the scanner, the sources said.
Ms. Gupta was alleged to have taken information from the senior diplomat and passed it on to Pakistani spy agencies.
However, it was not immediately clear whether he knew about the woman officer's designs.
