R&AW is worried about its station head in Islamabad, R K Sharma. He is under the scanner, proving to be a bigger “bomb”than Madhuri Gupta, a second-secretary at the Indian High Commission in Islamabad, sources said.
The government has asked for a thorough “sanitisation”of all major diplomatic missions abroad, sources said. In a series of meetings R&AW and IB officials in tandem with the ministry of external affairs have reviewed the credentials of all officials posted abroad. “Long posting in one location, particularly in coveted places, may come under review and officers will be reverted home”, sources said.
High ambitions
The 53-year-old spy Madhuri Gupta was hoping for a plum diplomatic posting in either London or Washington.
“I should get London or Washington,”a confident Gupta told PTI a few months back. Gupta had earlier served in the Indian mission in Baghdad and said she was looking forward to another good posting sometime later this year. Gupta made friends easily and was great with small talk. She could talk about clothes, hair styles or Pakistan’s Urdu press — “where the real news was” — with equal ease. “English newspapers are boring. They always pick up news a day late. If you want to read real news, real gossip, read Urdu newspapers,”she said.
Gupta learnt Urdu in New Delhi shortly before she was posted to Pakistan in late 2007.
“She taught me from the scratch. I didn’t even know my ‘alif-bays’,” said Gupta, who had earlier learnt another foreign language at Jawaharlal Nehru University’s school of languages.
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