Police have arrested six people, including a YouTuber from Hisar in Haryana, for allegedly passing sensitive Indian military information to Pakistan.
The arrested woman has been identified as Jyoti Malhotra aka Jyoti Rani.
She runs a YouTube channel named ‘Travel With Jo’.
According to reports, she has been arrested with five others in connection with espionage charges.
Officials told NDTV that the 33-year-old, who describes herself on her YouTube as a ‘nomadic Leo girl wanderer’, ‘Haryanvi+Punjabi’ and ‘purane khyalo ki modern ladki’ (a modern girl with a traditional outlook), had come in contact with an official, Ehsan-ur-Rahim alias Danish, in the Pakistan High Commission and had gone to the neighbouring country at least twice.
Persona No Grata
Last week, Danish was declared persona non grata and New Delhi asked him to leave India within 24 hours for committing espionage and leaking sensitive information regarding the movements of the Indian Army.
Danish was directed to leave the country amid the recent conflict between India and Pakistan following Operation Sindoor.
The Indian Armed Forces had launched Operation Sindoor on May 7 and targeted nine terror hubs in Pakistan and PoK in response to the recent terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pahalgam, popularly known as ‘Mini Switzerland’, that left 26 people, mostly non-Muslim tourists, dead on April 22.
Jyoti Malhotra has reportedly confessed to the investigators during interrogation that she had gone to the Pakistan High Commission in Delhi in 2023 to get a visa to visit the country when she met Rahim and began talking to him.
She said she travelled across the border twice after that and met Rahim’s acquaintance Ali Ahwan.
Travel To Pakistan
She said Ahwan arranged for her stay and travel in Pakistan.
“In Pakistan, Ali Ahwan arranged a meeting with Pakistani security and intelligence officials, and I met Shakir and Rana Shahbaz. I took Shakir’s mobile number and saved it in my phone under the name of ‘Jat Randhawa’ to avoid suspicion. Then I came back to India and remained in constant touch with all the above people through platforms like WhatsApp, Snapchat and Telegram and started exchanging anti-national information. I also met Rahim several times,” Officials quoted Malhotra as having told the police, reported NDTV.
In March, she shared several images and videos of her latest trip to Pakistan on Instagram.
Investigators told Hindustan Times she also entered into an intimate relationship with a Pakistani Intelligence Operatives (PIOs) and even travelled to Bali, Indonesia, with him.
(With inputs from IBNS)
