We have used the perturbed angular correlation technique to measure the orientation of the electric‐field gradients (EFGs) due to vacancy trapping by substitutional indium donors in the II‐VI semiconductor Hg0.79Cd0.2Te. Previously, two hyperfine interaction frequencies were measured and were attributed to the trapping of a metal vacancy at a next nearest‐neighbor site to the indium atom in bulk solid‐state recrystallized materials. In the present experiments, measurements are done on thin‐film samples to find the principal axes of the EFGs. Both EFGs are found to have principal axes parallel to a ⟨111⟩ crystal axis, despite the fact that a simple point charge model supports a ⟨110⟩ EFG for this ⟨110⟩‐oriented In‐VHgcomplex. A similar situation exists for indium‐vacancy pairing in other II‐VI semiconductors. We propose that the ⟨111⟩ EFG orientation arises from the electric dipole moments of the highly polarized Te ions in the region of the vacancy.