New Delhi:
A spy. Check. Love. Check. Money. Check.
The damning basics of Madhuri Gupta's story are the must-haves of any spy story. Which is what this is. For real.
The 53-year-old was posted at the Islamabad High Commission. The Indian Foreign Services B-Cadre diplomat was the Second Secretary for Press and Information at the highly-sensitive Islamabad embassy. She allegedly fell in love with Rana, her Pakistani handler, and began selling secrets to him. Sources say that in her confession to the police, she said she also wanted revenge - she had been overlooked for promotion, and was unhappy with her service conditions.
In other words, she did it for love and money.
She was arrested in Delhi on Tuesday, after being summoned from Pakistan on the pretext that she was needed for the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) meet, now underway in Thimphu.
Eight months ago, Gupta's colleagues at the mission became suspicious of her motives, and alerted her seniors.
"We have reason to believe an official of the Indian High Commission in Islamabad had been passing info to Pakistan intelligence agencies. The matter is currently under investigation. The officer is cooperating with us," said Vishnu Prakash, a spokesperson for the Ministry of External Affairs.
Officials confirm that as a second secretary, Gupta's access to classified information may have been limited.
Gupta, who was known for her proficiency in Urdu, is accused of having shared the identity of undercover Indian officers, and of sharing details of their assignments.
To the Pakistanis who she worked for, however, she bragged that she had intimate access to the station chief of India's intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), in Islamabad. RAW has investigated emails she sent, but say much of the information she gave, quoting or citing the RAW chief, is incorrect. So far, RAW has no evidence against him.
When asked about Gupta's arrest, Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, who is at the SAARC meet in Thimphu said, "My information is as good as yours because it is based on media reports."
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