THE REAL LOVE JIHAD
Sometime in mid-2020, Krunal Kumar Baria received a Facebook friend request. It was from Sidra Khan, a pretty lady dressed in a salwar kameez who seemed to be in her mid-20s. Baria, posted with the Indian Army’s IT cell in Ferozepur cantonment, didn’t suspect anything amiss. They exchanged phone numbers—she had three, two Pakistani and one Indian. They started chatting, moved on to WhatsApp calls and gradually things became more intimate. They had phone sex. And soon Kumar was telling Sidra all that she wanted to know.
On October 23, over a year-and-a-half later, a team from the Punjab Police’s special operation cell, Amritsar, arrested Baria on charges of leaking confidential information. ‘Sidra’ is what India’s military intelligence calls a Pakistani Intelligence Operative (PIO). PIOs work for the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan’s premier intelligence agency. Sidra had paid Baria Rs 10,000 for information
