Madhuri Gupta

Madhuri Gupta was an Indian diplomat posted as second secretary at the Indian High Commission in Islamabad, Pakistan - in its press and information section who fell in love with a mysterious Pakistani man and ended up spying for India.

Career

She joined the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) in the early 1980s as part of the Indian Foreign Service’s Grade B cadre. She was one of the support staff who work behind the scenes to support India’s diplomatic apparatus. Gupta served as a bureaucrat for almost three decades as part of various Indian missions abroad, including Iraq, Liberia, Malaysia, and Croatia. Her fluency in Urdu made Gupta an asset that eventually led to her appointment as Second Secretary (Press & Information) at the Indian High Commission in Islamabad in 2007–2008.

Arrest

By late 2009, suspicions were strong that an Indian diplomat in Islamabad had gone rogue. Indian agencies fed Gupta false intelligence, and when it leaked, they knew. She was summoned to Delhi in April 2010, under the pretext of helping organize the upcoming SAARC summit. On the morning of April 22, as she arrived for a meeting at South Block, officers arrested her. She confessed swiftly. Investigators say she gave up names, email passwords, and admitted to leaking classified details—including exposing Indian intelligence officials operating in Pakistan. The damage, insiders say, was “irreversible.” In one move, she had compromised the entire Indian intelligence network in Islamabad.

Delhi Police Special Cell, in July 2010, filed a charge-sheet against Gupta. Investigators recovered 73 emails, 54 sent and 19 received.

Verdict

While the trial dragged on for years, the verdict finally came in May 2018—eight years after her arrest. She was convicted of criminal conspiracy and espionage, though acquitted of charges involving actual classified documents. The court observed that Gupta, once a respected official, had become a “security threat” who had “tarnished the image of the country.”