Haryana YouTuber Jyoti Malhotra was detained for spying for Pakistan

Haryana YouTuber Jyoti Malhotra was detained for spying for Pakistan, according to police interrogation by the NIA and IB.

According to a top Haryana Police officer, the central government and military intelligence authorities are also looking into her travel history because she has allegedly been to China, Pakistan, and other places. 

A sobering reminder of a similar case involving another lady, Madhuri Gupta, who was suspected of covertly aiding Pakistan's interests, was the arrest of Jyoti Malhotra, the face behind the well-known YouTube channel "Travel with Jo," for allegedly sharing classified military information with Pakistan.

Honeytrap:

The distinction between the two ladies is that Gupta was a diplomat who served as the second secretary (press & information) at the Indian high commission in Islamabad rather than an influencer. Gupta fell victim to a sophisticated honeytrap when Jamshed, a Pakistani intelligence officer, seduced her with promises of unending love and deftly used her feelings to achieve his goals.

In the spring of 2010, Gupta was detained by Delhi Police's Special Cell under the Official Secrets Act for providing Pakistan's ISI intelligence agency with vital defense-related information. According to the investigation, she communicated with two Pakistani intelligence officers, Jamshed and Mudassar Raza Rana. Through a female journalist, the two guys connected with her and assisted her in obtaining a book she was looking for—written by Maulana Masood Azhar, the leader of Jaish-e-Mohammed. This was the start of a perilous friendship.

Evidence:

The evidence showed that Gupta, who was 52 at the time, used a computer installed at her Islamabad home and a Blackberry phone to communicate with Jamshed, who went by the code name Jim and was half her age. According to the investigation, she was so enamoured of Jim that she supposedly desired to convert to Islam, wed him, and travel to Istanbul. In addition to discussing her job, she frequently spoke with Jim about Rumi, and her fluency in Urdu.

Intel:

The Pakistani agents constructed two email addresses for her, **lastrao@gmail.com and **arao@gmail.com, from which almost six dozen emails were recovered. The transcripts exposed a terrifying tactic: Jamshed and his superior Rana, a classmate of Rahman Malik, Pakistan's interior minister at the time, expertly took advantage of Gupta's work-related complaints and played on her feelings to undermine her allegiance. She told her interrogators that she had a grudge against the Indian government because her two-year vacation had not been approved and her salary had been withheld.

According to the police investigation, Gupta travelled to Jammu and Kashmir in March 2010 at Rana's request, presumably to obtain the state's Annual Plan investigation. According to the allegations, Rana also requested details about the 310MW hydroelectric power plant that is expected to be established in the state by 2020. When the diplomat began demonstrating interest in topics outside of her area of expertise, her superiors in Islamabad took notice. An alert was raised by this as well as the information provided by an Indian intelligence mole in the high commission looking into a domestic scheme there.

Conclusion:

Based on the fact that the emails "passed on by the accused were categorically sensitive information which could have been useful to the enemy country, which were strategically very important for the foreign policy of the country and its secrecy was of utmost importance," a city court found Gupta guilty in 2018 under Sections 3 and 5 of the Official Secrets Act.