Madhuri deeply resentful of IFS,her arrest blew RAW officer’s cover

She named two handlers Mubashir Rana and Jamshed who she claims were introduced to her by a Pak journalist in 2008 but their names haven’t been verified.

While Gupta’s motivations are not clear,sources said,there’s evidence to suggest that the 53-year-old Second Secretary working with the Indian High Commission in Islamabad was “disgruntled” with her job. And it was after she criticised her working conditions in public that Gupta was approached by the ISI,sources said.

They said she has admitted she was sending daily reports to her handlers whom she met frequently in a safehouse in Islamabad but has denied any “personal or financial relationship” with her handlers.

While the damage done by her is still being ascertained,the government is worried over how her case has been handled by security agencies here. For,in a major faux pas,authorities exposed R K Sharma,Press Counsellor and senior officer of India’s external intelligence agency,Research and Analysis Wing (RAW),in Pakistan,while sharing information with the media on Wednesday. Senior officials admit the revelation has caused a major embarrassment.

It has made the continuance of that officer in Pakistan untenable and with his identity exposed,he is no longer in a position to carry out his job. In fact,the revelation has jeopardised his chances of any similar assignment ever. Sources said a decision on him was likely as soon as the top MEA brass returns from Bhutan where the SAARC conference is currently underway.

Questions are also being raised over the timing of the disclosure about Madhuri Gupta’s espionage activities,coming as it did just a day before the Prime Ministers of the two countries were to meet in Bhutan on the sidelines of the SAARC summit. Gupta had already been under detention for five days before the news broke out and sources said the investigators probably chose a wrong time to let the information become public.

Sources said it was unlikely that she had passed on anything very damning to her Pakistani handlers. They pointed out that she had been charged only under the Official Secrets Act and not the National Security Act or booked for sedition.

Gupta accused a senior IFS officer of having mistreated her during her posting in Baghdad and blamed the MEA for not giving her study leave with pay. A “high-strung personality” with deep resentment towards IFS officers,Gupta said she interacted well with Sharma but there’s no evidence to show if she blew the cover of other Indian operatives.

Gupta told her interrogators that her handlers had created a special e-mail ID for her through which she used to send reports about the daily happenings in the High Commission. One of the emails Gupta used included madsmiles@gmail.com. Sources believe that it appears,as of now,that Gupta was a “one-woman” operation without any accomplice. But investigators are also probing certain officials in the Indian High Commission who were privy to certain information,which Gupta got access to.

Gupta was also reportedly using two mobile phones and the police are analysing call details of both. She was in touch with her friends in India and other places where she has worked via Facebook. The Facebook account in her name shows her as a fan of several pages including CNN International,“I need more sleep” and “Gol gappe.”