In this paper, an ultrathin triple-band polarization insensitive metamaterial (MTM) absorber has been presented for C-band applications. The proposed structure is explained as a combination of two absorbers, named as Absorber-I and Absorber-II. It exhibit 91%, 98.9% and 99.5% absorptivity at 4.2 GHz, 7 GHz and 7.4 GHz frequencies respectively. Absorber-I and Absorber-II are individually responsible for the origin of two separate frequency bands at 4.2 GHz and 7 GHz respectively. Further, mutual coupling between Absorber-I and Absorber-II is responsible to generate one more absorption band at the frequency of 7.4 GHz. The fourfold symmetric nature of the proposed unit cell provides polarization insensitivity phenomena. The absorbing mechanism of the designed absorber has been explained by two methods. One is by plotting input impedance of the absorber. Another one is by analyzing the EM wave propagation inside the structure. The proposed absorber has been fabricated and simulation results are experimentally verified. © 2017 Elsevier GmbH