In the wake of the arrest of YouTuber Jyoti Malhotra on espionage charges for Pakistan, Punjab Police have now discovered another prominent spy ring linked to Jasbir Singh, a YouTuber from Rupnagar.
Jasbir Singh, whose YouTube channel 'JaanMahal' has a massive following, was in touch with a Pakistani intelligence officer named Shakir, who is also referred to as Jutt Randhawa. Shakir is known to be part of a terror-linked spying network.
Jasbir was in close contact not just with Haryana-based Malhotra but also with a Pakistani national, Ehsan-ur-Rahim, alias Danish, said Punjab Director General of Police (DGP) Gaurav Yadav. Danish was a Pakistan High Commission official who had been tossed out of India, Yadav said in a post on X (formerly Twitter).
The investigators came to know that Jasbir had visited Pakistan's National Day events in Delhi at Danish's invitation. Jasbir was said to have met a number of Pakistani military officers and bloggers when he attended the event.
The DGP also verified that Jasbir had visited Pakistan in 2020, 2021, and again in 2024. Jasbir's electronic devices, which have several contacts with Pakistani numbers, are currently being forensically examined.
After the arrest of Malhotra, Jasbir is said to have attempted to erase all evidence of his interaction with these operatives to avoid detection.
An FIR has been registered in Mohali, and officials are currently probing further to dismantle the entire espionage chain and find out all those involved.
At the same time, in an operation related to this one a day before, the Punjab Police's Counter-Intelligence wing, in collaboration with Tarn Taran district police, arrested another person allegedly transmitting sensitive military intelligence to Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) during Operation Sindoor.
The accused Gagandeep Singh alias Gagan is from Tarn Taran.
DGP Yadav disclosed that Singh had been in direct contact with Gopal Singh Chawla, an Islamabad-based pro-Khalistan leader. Theirs was a relationship of more than five years, during which Chawla introduced Singh to ISI handlers.
The investigations have revealed that Singh had been passing on sensitive information—troop positions, deployments, and movements—to the Pakistani handlers. This was a serious threat to India's national security.
Two mobile phones were confiscated from the accused, which held sensitive information and records of correspondence with over 20 ISI operatives. The authorities also discovered evidence that Singh received payment in Indian-based channels as reimbursement for the information furnished.
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