Hisar: In a major espionage bust, popular travel vlogger Jyoti Malhotra (33) has been arrested on charges of spying for Pakistan. According to police, Malhotra had been working as an agent for Pakistan’s intelligence agency. Months before her arrest, a concerned social media user had flagged suspicious patterns in her activities.
Malhotra, who runs the YouTube channel Travel with Jo with nearly 400,000 subscribers, allegedly passed sensitive information about Indian military installations to Pakistani handlers. Police say her movements and assignments were coordinated by senior ISI operative Shakir alias Rana Shahbaz, whose contact she saved under a false name to avoid detection.
@NIA_India please keep close watch on this lady..she first visited and attained pakistani embassy function then visited pakistan for 10 days now she is heading for kashmir… may be some link behind all these pic.twitter.com/kfrXZNhMuE
— kapil Jain (@chupchaplo) May 10, 2024
Investigations reveal she primarily used encrypted platforms like Telegram and Snapchat to communicate with Pakistani handlers. Her recruitment allegedly began at the Pakistani embassy in India, where she met an officer named Danish while applying for a visa. Within minutes, she was persuaded to work for Pakistan—an offer she accepted willingly, reportedly lured by the promise of luxury.
(In her video posted on March 30 last year, Malhotra says she was invited to an Iftar party before entering the High Commission.)
Malhotra also enlisted Arman, a local contact from Nuh Mewat, to help collect surveillance data from sensitive military locations including the Ordnance Depot in Gurugram. Arman has been arrested, with compromising material recovered from his phone and laptop.
DSP Kamaljeet of Hisar confirmed Malhotra is in five-day custody, and her devices have been sent for forensic analysis to retrieve deleted data. Preliminary evidence, police say, confirms her involvement with Pakistani intelligence.
The case has emerged just days after the Pahalgam terror attack, which claimed over 25 lives, adding urgency to the ongoing investigation into espionage networks operating across northern India.
