An Uber ride in the national capital turned into an unexpected espionage concern after a woman passenger overheard her driver engaged in a religious conversation with someone from Pakistan. The incident has triggered serious questions about the use of chat applications for cross-border propaganda and potential radicalisation.
Swati Goel Sharma, journalist and founder of SewaNyaya, shared a detailed account and a short video of the incident on 21 July 2026, which has since gone viral. According to her post, the recording began when she heard the driver say, “You are from Pakistan, right?”.
“I started recording after that. The driver started – ‘aapki Mecca medina mein pehle shivling thi…’ You can hear the rest of what he said in this video till my destination arrived,” Sharma wrote on her X handle.
The Conversation
In the recording, the driver can be heard saying: “So the Mecca and Medina you go to is Neither theirs. So whichever Mecca and Medina, where you go to worship, there do you know that earlier there was only Shivling. Yes, Shivling which we worship. No, our Lord Shiva’s Shivaling is there in Mecca Medina. It is on this shivling that your mosque was made. There is a Shivalinga right there. You can ask your elders about it if you want.”
In the Uber cab I took today, I overheard the driver saying – “aap pakistan se ho na…”
I started recording after that. The driver started – aapki Mecca medina mein pehle shivling thi..”
You can hear the rest of what he said in this video till my destination arrived
Before… pic.twitter.com/c9GbBxwgGz
— Swati Goel Sharma (@swati_gs) July 21, 2026
The Trumeet App Revelation
Before exiting the cab, Sharma asked the driver who he was speaking to. The driver revealed that he was part of a group on a mobile application called Trumeet, which, he stated, included several Pakistanis who regularly engaged Indians in conversations on religion, regardless of the original subject of discussion.
When Sharma asked what kind of conversations took place, the driver cited examples: “Like why do you Hindus worship cow as mother. And if you do, do you worship saand (bull) as baap (father)”.
The driver admitted that some people on the group were influenced by such discussions, though he claimed he personally opposed the questions and told Pakistanis to “mind their own business and let us mind ours”. He also showed Sharma a screenshot of the mobile app where the conversation was taking place.
Security Concerns
Sharma told the driver that anti-terrorist agencies had caught several people in India who got influenced by Pakistani propaganda through chat applications and subsequently became radicalised to carry out jihadi terror acts. She specifically mentioned that Zakir Naik-type conversion propaganda was now being carried out through such apps.
The driver assured her that he would share this information with his friends.
This incident comes amid growing concerns about Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) using digital platforms for espionage and influence operations. Security experts have revealed that ISI has adopted a new mechanism of recruiting social media influencers and using chat applications for narrative building and extracting sensitive information. This was especially the talking point during Operation Sindoor when YouTuber/vlogger Jyoti Malhotra was apprehended.
Intelligence sources have previously reported that Islamist syndicates are using platforms like Telegram, Instagram, Tinder, and Signal for religious indoctrination, with more than 60 Telegram groups being monitored for such activities. A terror module with suspected links to ISIS and Al-Qaeda was recently unearthed for allegedly using online videos and speeches of extremists like Zakir Naik to radicalise youth.
The driver’s revelation about Pakistanis using an app to engage Indians in divisive religious conversations adds a new dimension to the digital battlefield, raising serious questions about the reach and impact of such cross-border influence operations.
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