The Haryana Police arrested travel blogger Jyoti Rani, 33, on Friday for allegedly spying for Pakistani intelligence agencies during Operation Sindoor.
Rani, who has a YouTube channel called Travel with Jo with over 3,77,000 subscribers and an Instagram account with over 1,32,000 followers, was taken into custody after she was found sharing “sensitive information” with an official of the Pakistan High Commission in Delhi, the police said.
Rani was arrested from the New Aggarwal Extension area in Hisar district and booked under Sections 3 and 5 of the Official Secrets Act and Section 152 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (acts that endanger the sovereignty, unity, and integrity of India). She was produced in court on Saturday and remanded to five days’ police custody. She is also being questioned by intelligence agencies, officials said.Rani, whose father Harish Kumar Malhotra is a retired Haryana electricity board employee, used to work in a company in Gurugram but she quit during the COVID-19 pandemic and became a travel blogger around three years ago. She last left her home in Hisar on May 6, telling her parents she was going to Delhi, the police said.
She has been accused of spying for Pakistan and being in direct contact with handlers there to portray a positive image of that country through her content, the police said. In March and April, Rani had uploaded videos and reels of her trip to Pakistan.
According to the police, she allegedly disclosed in her preliminary interrogation that she had “gone to Pakistan High Commission for getting a visitor visa in 2023”. It was then that she allegedly came into contact with a Pakistan High Commission official in New Delhi named Ehsan-ur-Rahim alias Danish. She allegedly shared the official’s phone number with the police and said that she remained in touch with him.
Rani got her visa in 2023 and subsequently travelled to Pakistan twice, the police said.
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“On Danish’s insistence, she met a man named Ali Ahwan in Pakistan who arranged her travel and stay there. She added that Ali got her in touch with two Pakistani security and intelligence officials named Shakir and Rana Shahbaz. She also took Shakir’s mobile phone number and saved it on her mobile phone as Jatt Randhawa to avoid any suspicion,” a police official said.
“She remained in touch with all three men through social media platforms and exchanged multiple phone calls and messages. She subsequently started sharing sensitive information about vital installations of India to these persons. She kept on meeting Danish,” the official added.
According to the police, Danish was declared persona non grata on May 13 by the Indian government after he was accused of spying. He was also asked to leave India immediately.