By Sushil Kutty
Social Media spies are giving sleepless nights to not only intelligence agencies but also to private television channels with TRPs to consider. Hit hard by steadily increasing numbers of YouTubers, these television channels have latched on to YouTuber Jyoti Malhotra arrest on charges of espionage to ask for “government regulation” of YouTubers.
And the desperation is showing. This even as the National Investigation Agency (NIA) and Intelligence Bureau (IB) discovered Jyoti Malhotra. India’s intel agencies had no inkling that ‘Pahalgam’ could have had a prelude. What were they doing when Jyoti Malhotra was gallivanting in Pakistan, laughing her way into the embrace of Pakistan’s spy outfits?
Jyoti Malhotra, a.k.a ‘Jyoti Rani’, visited Pahalgam, on a recce mission. She was allegedly laying the layout for Pakistani handlers in Pakistan. Did Jyoti Malhotra know the terrorists’ plan to separate the Hindu from the circumcised before the kill? Did Malhotra collaborate? Is it hard to believe any Indian would?
Jyoti Malhotra was sent to five days’ police remand. News trickling out says Jyoti is singing like a canary. The NIA and the IB now want to make up for being late. Malhotra has been running circles around the intel agencies. Jyoti should have been tagged and “roped” long before ‘Pahalgam’.
It is criminal that the NIA and the IB have only now woken up to Jyoti Malhotra and her Pakistani/Chinese links. Jyoti’s ties with Pakistani Intelligence Operatives (PIOs) isn’t a figment of imagination. And because she’s a YouTuber, details of her trips to Pakistan, China, Bangladesh and Dubai have been in public domain. Jyoti’s YouTube channel ‘Travel With Jo’ has three-and-a-half lakh subscribers, big enough a number to take her places!
YouTube is a money-spinner if “views” exceeded a certain number. A regular income is paid in dollars, which is why ‘you-tubing’ is an addiction. Dollars plus cheap publicity.The unbelievable film-star like existence.
It is heady addiction and once a YouTuber always a YouTuber! There is more than enough reason to tilt at the windmills, so to speak. But it is one thing to be a YouTuber and quite another to become a spy and betray your country. Jyoti Malhotra went to the Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi and fell to the Urdu-suave!
It was ‘spy’ at first sight! Ehsan-ur-Rahim alias Danish broke through Jyoti Malhotra’s defences! He arranged Malhotra’s trips to Pakistan, her boarding and lodging there. Jyoti met Pakistan’s intelligence operatives in Lahore and other places of interest in Pakistan. Gun-wielding Pakistani agents escorted her to Lahore’s Anarkali Bazar.
Jyoti got the full ‘charm’ treatment. And the charm offensive led her to betraying her country! The “ISI” even arranged a rendezvous with Maryam Sharif! The two “ladies” conversed in Punjabi. Jyoti Malhotra was ripe for recruitment to Pakistan’s Spy Corps. Hisar’s police Chief Shashank Kumar Sawan says Jyoti was a “developing asset” for the ISI.
The “NIA was here to interrogate her”, said Sawan. What did the NIA learn, did Jyoti Malhotra do a recce of the meadow in Pahalgam where the 26 Hindus were shot dead? Did she divulge sensitive info on India’s military assets and military movement to Pakistan following the launch of Operation Sindoor?
A spate of other arrests followed, 14 in total. From Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. Suddenly everybody’s interested in Jyoti Malhotra. ‘Travel With Jo’ went to Pakistan, China, Dubai, Thailand, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, and Indonesia. Jyoti trips to Pakistan, China, Bangladesh and Dubai are under the lens. A Pakistani agent, nicknamed ‘Jatt Randhawa’ was her favourite. His Pakistani name is ‘Shakir’ but she saved him as ‘Jatt Randhawa’ in her mobile.
Jyoti’s case will go to the “terror investigating agency”. YouTuber Malhotra is in big-time trouble. Should it matter that Jyoti Malhotra grew up in a “broken family”, with her parents parting ways “30 years ago” and Jyoti is 33! Jyoti has been living in Hisar, Haryana, with her father and his brother. The father is indignant his daughter is being questioned. “She took the government’s permission before going to Pakistan”, he says.
The sad part of the story is Ehsan-ur-Rahim alias ‘Danish’, Ali Ahwan, Shakir and Rana Shahbaz are all free-birds as Jyoti Malhotra stares at a bleak future. The ‘Deshdrohi’ charge never fetched anybody sympathy. It is like the tattoo ‘Mera Baap Chor Hai’ which can never be erased.
Indian intelligence agencies and the “babus” in the MHA and the Ministry of Home Affairs just don’t know how to “handle” Social Media and pick up clues from Social Media. YouTubers are like ‘varmint’, they’re everywhere. Hundreds of thousands of them. Post-Operation Sindoor, they’re tumbling out.
The question remains, why are so many Indians, the majority of them “educated and sane”, falling prey to the Jyoti Malhotra Syndrome? What is it, boredom, a disillusionment, religion, vanity, cheap publicity, money, honey-trap…, what? Social Media, especially YouTube, is full of examples of Indians falling to Pakistani wiles. Republic TV wants the central government to “regulate YouTube”.
The channel’s owner is angry at the growing number of YouTube channels minting money. He says it is his competitors’ doing. The “CEO” invites government-blocked Pakistani “journalists” as guests to his prime-time show but is mad Indian YouTubers are pulling the carpet from under the Republic’s TRP. The man doesn’t even know why the central government “banned” scores of Pakistani YouTube channels? His “nationalism” is a charade. (IPA Service)
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