India’s transnational repression campaign has global tentacles

The morning after Valentine’s Day 2021, the Indian government sent me an unexpected and unwelcome gift. I woke to find my phone blowing up with messages from dozens of friends asking: “Have you seen the news from India? You’re all over it. Are you ok?”

As I slept, Delhi Police falsely accused me of fomenting anti-government protests in India by circulating a “toolkit” to spread awareness on social media. As evidence, they pointed to a 100-page dossier from a shadowy group, DisinfoLab, that even doxxed my mother.

Police claimed I’d been under surveillance by Indian security since 2006. They labeled me a “mastermind” and “kingpin” of “disinformation warfare” against India, allegedly with Pakistani intelligence links. I was named a “proponent of Khalistan,” the Sikh movement for an independent homeland in northwestern India. Indian media seized on this story, speculating I was hiding in Malaysia.

In truth, I’m a hillbilly turned journalist from rural Northern California whose interest in India’s human rights landscape began two decades ago after chance association with Indian-Americans in my state.

This eventually led me to investigate Indian interference in U.S. politics. I documented how politicians like Tulsi Gabbard (Hawaii), Raja Krishnamoorthi (Illinois), Sri Preston Kulkarni (Texas), and more entertain supporters of India’s Hindu nationalist (Hindutva) movement. That angered India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and made me a target.

Then, after Tulsi Gabbard was appointed as the U.S. Director of National Intelligence (DNI), the targeting became a more pressing and personal concern.

In December 2023, The Washington Post revealed that DisinfoLab, which targets critics of India, is likely operated by India’s external intelligence agency, the Research & Analysis Wing (RAW). I was its first guinea pig to test its later campaigns aimed at smearing critics of the BJP’s Hindutva agenda.

Others were also in the crosshairs.

In April 2023, DisinfoLab targeted Hindus for Human Rights co-founder Sunita Viswanath. They featured her in a stylized “wanted” poster, doxxing her family and even her wedding photo. After Viswanath met opposition leader Rahul Gandhi, a BJP minister used DisinfoLab to accuse her of running an anti-India agenda.

The BJP’s reach extended further.

In 2021, U.S.-based activist Ajit Sahi discovered his phone was hacked with Pegasus spyware when he was living in India. Dr. Audrey Truschke, a Rutgers University professor, has endured death threats she attributes to BJP-linked campaigns. An online conference on “Dismantling Global Hindutva” (DGH) was flooded with trolling and backlash, including death and rape threats against participating academics.

Indian news media fuels harassment of Modi critics.

In 2018, Times Now aired a segment on Sikh-American activist Pawan Singh, sensationally framing his remarks at a Congressional briefing as “Anti-India Forces Storm Capitol Hill.” Figures like Sahi, Rasheed Ahmed of the Indian American Muslim Council, Raju Rajagopal of Hindus for Human Rights, and former U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom Chair Nadine Maenza have all been targeted by DisinfoLab and slandered on X (formerly Twitter), typically as Pakistan-aligned “anti-India” figures. Notoriously BJP-aligned outlets like OpIndia and The Sunday Guardian amplify this propaganda.

Then India added a more “hands-on” method to its toolkit for handling international critics. In June 2023, as Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi prepared for an official state visit to Washington, DC, RAW allegedly plotted to kill “so many targets” on North American soil.

The disclosure of assassination plots by Indian operatives in the U.S. and Canada, targeting Sikh activists, shocked many in North America.

It was no surprise for those of us who’ve long documented India’s international harassment tactics. For over two decades, we’ve alerted the U.S. Congress, Department of Justice, State Department, and National Security Council about India’s proxy threats against U.S.-based critics.

India often applies harsh measures even against visiting foreign nationals.

Reverend Peter Cook of the New York State Council of Churches was deported in 2020. Pastor Bryan Nerren from Tennessee endured seven months of detention in India before U.S. intervention secured his release, also in 2020. In 2024, UK-based Kashmiri professor Nitasha Kaul was detained for 24 hours in Bangalore without water or access to her phone before being deported.

Moreover, the Indian government has revoked “Overseas Citizen of India” status from critics such as New York Times journalist Aatish Taseer, former Vice journalist Angad Singh, and Swedish professor Ashok Swain. Now they cannot visit their home countries. Santa Clara University professor Rohit Chopra faces a prolonged defamation suit in India for exposing plagiarism in a book about V. D. Savarkar, the Hindu nationalist icon linked to Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination.

The objective is to make critics keep their heads down and to chill the speech of others who might voice out. Yet, for the U.S. and Canadian governments, the threat posed by India’s transnational repression (TNR) may now be unavoidable.

In September 2023, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau accused India of orchestrating the murder of Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in British Columbia. Soon after, the U.S. Justice Department revealed a murder-for-hire plot targeting Sikh activist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, allegedly organized by Indian intelligence. Both are major figures in North America’s Khalistani movement.

Canada took an unusually bold stance.

Trudeau explicitly accused India of “threatening and killing Canadian citizens on Canadian soil.” Then he expelled Indian diplomats after accusing them of gathering intelligence on Canadian Sikh activists and sharing it with criminal proxies who used the information for extortion, arson, and murder.

Both the U.S. and Canada traced responsibility to the highest echelons of India’s government. The Washington Post reported the U.S. suspects Indian National Security Advisor Ajit Doval approved the assassination plots — then the Department of Justice indicted a RAW official. Canada has openly implicated both Doval and Home Minister Amit Shah as authorizing the operations.

Thanks to several Congressional hearings on TNR since late 2023, the U.S. appears poised to address the issue decisively.

In December 2023, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held the first hearing. This was followed in 2024 by a House subcommittee session looking at TNR from a homeland security perspective, a Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission session, and a House hearing on human rights in India.

Legislators are even making moves.

In August 2024, then Representative Adam Schiff introduced H.R. 9707, a bill to establish a mechanism for tracking transnational repression activities by countries like India, tasking the Departments of State and Justice with investigative authority. It mentions India in the same breath as China, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. After Schiff’s election to the Senate, he’s likely to re-introduce the bill.

Through hearings, proposed legislation, and indictments tied to assassination plots, India’s global misconduct is coming under scrutiny.

As a targeted journalist, I am heartened and yet unsettled by these developments. I still remember how Delhi Police once warned I am on their radar. I can only wonder: do they have my home address?

I also wonder, if Tulsi Gabbard is the new DNI, what will become of me and others who have criticized American politicians like her for aligning with the BJP?

(Pieter Friedrich is a freelance journalist)