Jyoti Malhotra's Odisha Link: Cops Probe Puri-Based YouTuber, Guest House

Puri:

Intensifying action on possible cross-border espionage links, police have started investigating Odisha YouTuber Priyanka Senapati’s connection with travel vlogger Jyoti Malhotra arrested for “spying” for Pakistan.

Ms Senapati’s bank account and her contact with Ms Malhotra, who was arrested last week from Haryana, are being investigated. This comes days after she issued a clarification that the travel vlogger was her friend and they came into contact on YouTube. “I was completely unaware of the serious charges against her. Had I known she was spying for an enemy country, I would have never maintained any contact with her,” she wrote.

Police is also probing the communication between the two women, with all of Ms Senapati’s social media accounts being investigated. She and her family have faced multiple rounds of questioning, where she was asked about her relationship with Ms Malhotra and the personal or local intelligence shared between the two.

Priyanka’s father Rajkishore Senapati told ANI that his daughter came into contact with Ms Malhotra through social media and helped her during the latter’s visit to Puri around seven to eight months back in 2024. He said Ms Senapati had visited Kartarpur in Pakistan four months ago, a video of which was uploaded on March 25 on her YouTube channel ‘Prii_vlogs’ with the title “Odia Girl in Pakistan | Kartarpur Corridor Guide | Odia Vlog”. She has 14,800 subscribers on the channel, which shows her travels within Odisha and to other parts of the country.

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Also under scrutiny is the Jagannath Bhakt Niwas guest house, where Ms Malhotra stayed during her visit to Puri in September last year. The property’s manager said she arrived at the accommodation on September 21 with another woman and stayed for a day. “No one had come to meet her. She did not stay in the room for long, and would just come and go out after some time,” the manager said.

Puri Superintendent of Police Vinit Agrawal said a verification of all information, including financial transactions, is underway in the ongoing espionage investigation.

Inspector General of Police (IGP) CID Crime Branch, Sarthak Sarangi, said that facts are being verified. “She (Ms Malhotra) also visited Chilika and Konark. She was in touch with a YouTuber from Odisha. We are verifying all the facts. We are in touch with our counterparts in Haryana regarding Jyoti Malhotra.”

Ms Malhotra was arrested for allegedly sharing sensitive information and being in continuous contact with a Pakistani citizen. She allegedly met a Pakistani officer Ahsan-ur-Rahim when she went to the Pakistan High Commission in Delhi in 2023 to apply for a visa, travelled to Pakistan twice, and shared sensitive information, according to police. Officials said that the woman also told during investigation that Ahsan-ur-Rahim arranged for her stay and travel and arranged meetings with Pakistani security and intelligence agencies.

Ms Malhotra was among 12 people who were arrested from Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh over the past two weeks on charges of espionage, with investigators pointing at an alleged Pakistan-linked spy network operating in northern India. Her YouTube channel ‘Travel With Jo’, which has 3,94,000 subscribers, has videos of her visits to Pakistan from September 2022, April 2024 and March this year.

With inputs from Dev Kumar