Up First from NPR - The Sunday Story: An Indian Political Scandal

Episode Date: June 2, 2024

Starting in 2018, sixteen people were arrested in India for allegedly plotting to assassinate Prime Minister Narendra Modi. They included professors, a poet, trade unionists and members of an improv acting troupe. Even an elderly Jesuit priest.The evidence against them, discovered on their electronic devices, appears damning: minutes of terror cell meetings, emails to banned Maoist rebels and a letter suggesting a suicide attack on Modi.Today, fifteen defendants continue to await trial. They all say they were falsely accused and that the evidence against them was fabricated and planted by hackers in order to silence them. Digital forensic investigators not only agree but say Modi's own government may be involved.In this episode of The Sunday Story, NPR's Lauren Frayer follows the twists and turns of what Indian police say was a complex plot to sabotage Modi's government, and that defendants say was a setup. One of the defendants, the Rev. Stan Swamy, died while fighting to clear his name.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

I'm Ayesha Roscoe, and this is the Sunday Story. After six weeks of voting, the polls closed last night in India, the world's most populous democracy. Results are due out this week. The current Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, is expected to win a third term. Modi ke liye, samvidhan sarvopari hai. Modi ke liye, Babasaheb Ambedkar ki bhavna sarvopari hai. But there have been big questions about how Modi and his Hindu Nationalist Party have held on to power. In the lead up to this election, authorities jailed one of Modi's top rivals and froze the bank accounts of a political party running against him. And in recent years, Modi's government has even been accused of assassinating its critics abroad.

Pursuing credible allegations of a potential link between agents of the government of India and the killing of a Canadian citizen. Since 2018, NPR's Lauren Freyer has been following the twists and turns of another ongoing political scandal for Modi. It started with a civil rights campaign and it led to allegations that academics and human rights activists were engaged in a conspiracy to assassinate Prime Minister Modi. It's a story that involves outspoken activists, secret documents, and accusations of targeted cyber hacking, which investigators have tracked back to Modi's own government.

That's today's episode of the Sunday Story, after the break. Now, Our Change will honor 100 years of the Royal Canadian Air Force and their dedicated service to communities at home and abroad. From the skies to Our Change, this $2 commemorative circulation coin marks their storied past and promising future. Find the limited edition

Royal Canadian Air Force $2 coin today. We're back with the Sunday story. I'm here with NPR's Lauren Frayer. Lauren, thanks for joining us. Thank you so much for having me. So this is really such a complex story. Let's start with an overview on Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Like, what are his politics? Who is he? So Modi is an extremely popular prime minister of India.

Lots of Indians say he's really made them feel proud, part of an ascendant, fast-developing country. But he's also stifled dissent. As you mentioned, his government has thrown some of its rivals in jail, frozen their bank accounts. When I lived in India, the government tax inspectors raided the BBC offices after the network aired an unflattering documentary about Modi. Modi's government has also kicked Amnesty International and many other NGOs out of the country. So you could definitely call Modi a strong man. But he wins power democratically. So first in 2014, then again in 2019, and now he's poised for a strong man. But he wins power democratically. So first in 2014, then again in 2019, and now he's poised for a third term. He's done this with sort of a

muscular form of nationalism. He has a reputation as incorruptible but pro-business. He comes from an oppressed community in India's caste system. His father was a chaiwala or tea seller. So was Modi as a boy. So he's like a man of the people, you know, this non-elite outsider who has climbed the ranks to the most powerful office. He's perhaps most famous for cornering the Hindu vote.

So about 80% of Indians are Hindu. India is an incredibly diverse place, and people had traditionally voted by caste or by clan. And Modi has managed to unite people who really have not much else in common other than the Hindu faith. So they could be from opposite sides of the country. They don't speak the same language. They're from different castes, communities. What they have in common is their faith. And Modi has also slowly transformed a lot of India's secular institutions and made them more Hindu. That sounds like why he's likely to win a third term because he's really appealing to the majority, right? Totally. And even though India is a majority Hindu country, it also has significant minority

populations, including one of the biggest Muslim populations in the world. About 200 million Muslims live in India. And Modi has been accused of inciting hatred against Muslims as a way to sort of whip up support for his own party. But it's not just Muslims. Many minority groups are left wondering where their place is in this country that Modi has been reshaping. And this includes indigenous people. It includes people from oppressed caste groups, including Dalits, who those are the people who used to be called untouchable. And people from these groups, you know, I should say they don't only feel disenfranchised. They

have suffered an uptick in targeted violence against them since Modi has been in power. I got to say, though, Hindus aren't a monolith. Like, by no means do all Hindus in India support Modi. India has a parliamentary system with like hundreds, probably thousands of political parties. So any party or candidate just needs to win more votes than the other parties. They don't necessarily need to win a majority of all Indians. So tell me more about oppressed castes like the Dalits, once called Untouchables. What kind of political stance have they historically taken in India? Dalits have historically been downtrodden and marginalized, but they are also like 200 million people. And throughout history, they have been a powerful

political group. And in recent decades, they've been even more so finding their political footing. There were the Dalit Panthers, which took inspiration from the Black Panthers in the U.S. More recently, Dalits I know have taken inspiration from the Black Lives Matter movement. And the story I've been covering actually started with a big rally by Dalits back in 2018. It morphed into this impromptu anti-Modi demonstration. Thousands of people gathered, led by the grandson of B.R. Ambedkar, probably the most famous Dalit in Indian history, a contemporary of Mahatma Gandhi. Ambedkar was the lead author of the Indian Constitution, the father of the sort of affirmative action movement in India.

And so during this rally in 2018, his grandson, Prakash Ambedkar, led a pledge at this rally to never vote for Modi. And that scene, you know, tens of thousands of minorities at this rally chanting in unison, and it was televised, by the way, they're all chanting that they will never vote for Modi. That probably looked pretty threatening to Modi and to his party, the BJP.

And actually, riots broke out that day. One person was killed, and police started investigating that violence and then found what they say was a brazen plot to assassinate the prime minister. A planned political assassination like that, that gets really deep. I know. Right. And like the twists and turns were so jaw-dropping in this. Like I honestly, I had just moved to India when this was going on. And I attribute it to me being a newbie and like seriously, I must not understand what's going on here. But this story just kept percolating through my next five years based in India. But I never put it on air. It just, I ended up leaving India

last year for a job in the UK, never having put the story on air, never having like gathered it all together. And so I'm really glad to have the space to do it now. And it really feels more relevant than even before during this current election. So where should we start? So let's go back in time to begin with the story of a Jesuit priest. It's October 6, 2020, and an 83-year-old priest, Father Stan Swami, is staring directly into the camera. I wish to start this video by saying in the context in which I am... His voice sounds frail, but what he's saying is explosive. He accuses Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government of targeting him. And he had recently published a study of 3,000 people jailed for being members of banned Maoist communist groups in the jungles of eastern India. affiliation, and that many of their trials were held without lawyers and in a language they didn't understand. And so he filed a lawsuit on their behalf. And in this video, he says all of that embarrassed the government. And they want to put me out of the way. They want to put me out of the

way. Let us hope that some human sense will prevail. Let us hope that some human sense will prevail. And if it does not, I am ready. To face what is to be faced. And ready to pay the price, whatever be it. Thank you for your attention. So two days after recording this video, Stan Swamy is arrested, imprisoned, and denied bail. He was accused of being a part of that brazen plot to kill the prime minister, and also of being a member of one of those banned Maoist groups that do operate in the jungle where he worked.

Swamy was one of 16 outspoken Modi critics. These are professors, lawyers, trade unionists, even members of an improv theater troupe, and a poet, all jailed in this alleged plot to assassinate the prime minister. Police have confirmed that there was a plot to assassinate Prime Minister Narendra Modi. And on these 16 defendants' phones and computers, police found really damning evidence. Minutes of terror cell meetings, emails to Maoist rebels, even a letter suggesting a suicide attack targeting Modi. So I was aware that I was a thorn in the flesh. I didn't think it would go this far as it did. Sudha Bharadwaj is one of the 16 who were arrested. She also works on indigenous issues in India, and she'd crossed paths with Swami. She's now out on bail after more than three years in jail.

She was actually born in Massachusetts. Her parents were academics at MIT. And she gave up her U.S. passport to settle among these indigenous tribes in the Indian jungle. Bharadwaj is a lawyer who's devoted her career to representing those indigenous people in lawsuits against mining companies, many of which have close ties to Modi. My phone was continuously being tapped.

Sometimes I had to speak into the phone and say, will you please shut off that machine? I can't even listen to whoever I'm talking to. One day, about six years ago, she turned on the TV. Good evening and welcome viewers. A group of fake activists and fake intellectuals promoting terrorism. And she heard her name on the evening news. Exploiting our democracy for terrorism.

A right-wing TV anchor said that she was connected to a plot against the prime minister. I wasn't and I had no clue about it at all. I'm so far the stand didn't either. On her computer, police found letters that they say were written by Bharadwaj, pledging her allegiance to banned Maoist groups and planning to seed an insurgency against Modi's government.

But Bharadwaj says she did not write these letters. She points to the phrasing. It suggests they were written by a Marathi speaker. Now, Marathi is a regional language that Bharadwaj doesn't speak. However, it is the native tongue of the regional police in this case. And as for the evidence against Swami, the priest, I spoke to his lawyer, Mahir Desai. Basically, the evidence are screenshots of certain letters or certain minutes of meeting. Letters and minutes of terror plot meetings found on Swami's computer. Now, communist rebels do plot against the Indian government,

but they probably don't do board meetings. They don't have minutes. And besides, for Swami, it probably would have been difficult for him to type up meeting notes for terrorists, or for anyone for that matter. Was Stan a savvy computer user? No, no, no. A digital... One finger, one finger, slow typist. He didn't have a dexterity because he had Parkinson's disease.

Despite these red flags, the government sees this as a cut-and-dry case. It may have begun with a peaceful Dalit rally in 2018, but when violence broke out there and police started probing further, they say they uncovered something much bigger. No longer are Maoist rebels confined to the jungle. Police say they now have sleeper cells in Indian cities, with members in academia and human rights circles, people like Swami and Bharadwaj,

who are all trying to sabotage the Modi government. But the suspects and their lawyers insist they were framed, that someone hacked into these computers and planted fake evidence on them. And digital forensics investigators, these are outside experts who've analyzed the evidence in this case, they agree. You're listening to The Sunday Story. We'll be right back. Lauren, 16 people, a really diverse cast of characters, have been locked up.

You have a poet, professors, trade unionists. Right. Like, I can't think of a more sympathetic group than the defendants in this case. You've got an elderly Jesuit priest, Stan Swamy, who, like, lives among indigenous people and lobbies for their rights. You've got Suta Bharadwaj, who does the same, fighting these big mining companies on behalf of poor laborers. Like she was born in the U.S. to Indian parents and gave up her U.S. citizenship. I mean, I didn't feel at all American. So there was no reason for me to remain American.

She told me this funny story about going to the U.S. consulate to give up her U.S. passport. And the joke of it is that when we went to the American consul to get this revoked, he couldn't find the form. And he said, nobody's asked for it ever. And they were like, nobody does that. Nobody fills out that form. Choosing an Indian passport over a U.S. passport, like it's just, it doesn't open as many doors. It's harder to get visas and global travel is harder. But Bharadwaj wanted to live among indigenous people in the jungles of India. She didn't want to go anywhere else. And so her U.S. passport wasn't that useful to her. So I gave it up. Yeah. And later she wrote a book when she was behind bars. It's sort of a memoir of her years in jail, profiles of fellow inmates

that she was with in this women's prison. And it's sort of, and it really humanizes them. I've been a lawyer for a long time. I know that the judicial system is not very fair always to them. It's kind of like the Orange is the New Black of India, like a book from the inside of a women's prison. Wow. I mean, so how did you first meet her? I met Bharadwaj last October when she was out on bail. Hello.

Hi, Sushant. I'm sorry. She was staying in a skyscraper on the northern outskirts of Mumbai, and she was like a fish out of water, like hated the big mega city, was longing for the jungles of eastern and central India where she does her work. Freedom is much better.

But unfortunately for me, my bail conditions restrict me to Mumbai, which is not really my city. It's very far away from the place of my work. So it's like being in exile almost. Yeah. And what about the priest who recorded that video, Stan Swamy? Can you tell me more about him? Stan Swamy also worked with indigenous people in India. They're called Adivasis or India's sort of original inhabitants.

Incidentally, he comes from an upper beat, physically beat their lower caste servants. He cut off ties with people who encouraged him to enjoy his own caste privilege. Stan Suami was a devotee of Martin Luther King Jr. He followed the civil rights movement in the United States. So he was part of this sort of strain of social activists in the 1960s and 70s struggling for equality all over the world. You know, when you're talking about someone who, you know, is a follower of like, you know, MLK and the civil rights movement in the U.S., that's nonviolence. And this guy is one of the people who's getting locked up, right, for this conspiracy, right? Yeah, yeah.

You have this priest, Stan Swamy, and these other activists. They believe they were set up and had evidence planted on their computers and phones. Let's pick up the story where we left off. You consulted digital forensic experts, and they confirmed this. The phones and the computers were indeed hacked. Yeah, allegedly. And this was a huge deal in the cybersecurity world. Cloned copies of the defendants' devices were shared sort of far and wide.

And a lot of people started taking a closer look at this. And one of them was Tom Hagel. I'm with a cybersecurity firm called SentinelOne, researching cyber threat activity across the world. Now, he says this started as a phishing attack. And that means that as soon as Swami opened an email attachment, a hacker was able to gain access. Open the attachment and then it's game over from there. And he says hackers then used a tool like a remote administrator to take over the computer. Essentially a malicious piece of software that allows them to have complete control, essentially, as if they were sitting in front of the computer. So when we see the files being planted, what we're seeing is the attacker transfer certain files to the target's machine. And in this case, PDF files or Windows Word documents.

Hagel says he was able to trace the attacker's cyber footprints. Straight back to the Indian police. The malware that is doing the remote access is being controlled with the attacker's email and password. Those email addresses themselves are tied to backup recovery phone numbers associated with one of the arresting officers in the Indian police. You could go your whole career in this industry and never find something that's as obviously attributable like that. So that suggests that the police were involved.

But here's something else. Swami's lawyer, Mihir Desai, gave copies of this computer to another digital forensics firm. It's called Arsenal Consulting. And that company did some pro bono analysis of Swami's computer too. And they found evidence that the hacker tried to hide their digital footprint the night before the priest was arrested, like erase their tracks. And so the only people who knew he was going to be arrested the next day, says Desai, were high level officials in the National Investigation Agency, which is sort of the Indian equivalent of the FBI. So unless they informed the person who planted it, or unless they themselves planted it, there is no way in which the person who planted the evidence could have known that his house

is going to be needed tomorrow. So that is something which we found very, very suspicious. Now that may have been a coincidence. But the lawyer and the digital forensics people, they call this a smoking gun. They say it wasn't just the police, but officials at the highest levels of Modi's government, the National Investigation Agency, who are at least aware of this hack. This is, of course, a bombshell allegation. But police and government officials have denied this and have refused my repeated requests for comment. Officials from Modi's party also declined to speak with me on the record. But here's how they see this. Even if

Swami was hacked, there is no evidence that it came from the prime minister or that he even knew about it. Probably some renegade hacker. Who knows? Meanwhile, nefarious stuff keeps happening. This week brought an explosive investigation from The Washington Post and a consortium of media partners. A controversial spyware called Pegasus. Lawyers and journalists looking into this case have found Pegasus spyware on their devices. It's an Israeli-made surveillance tool that is sold only to governments. Their investigation linked Pegasus and its vendor, the Israel-based NSO Group, to thousands of phone numbers and dozens of devices belonging to international journalists, human rights activists and heads of state.

There is a really worrying, disturbing pattern of spyware attacks in India. Becca White is with Amnesty International's tech branch. And it's part of a broader pattern of dissent being crushed, freedom of expression being stifled and people speaking truth to power being targeted and attacked and silenced. I'm quoting experts outside of India here because a lot of them who are inside India are pretty scared. Even an Indian expat who lives in Europe and works for a big human rights organization wouldn't talk to me on the record unless I could disguise their voice. Six years on, these human rights activists are still awaiting trial.

Except for one of them. The big breaking story, Father Stan Swamy, the 84-year-old priest and activist, has now died in a Mumbai hospital. Less than a year into his imprisonment, in the summer of 2021, Stan Swamy died of cardiac arrest and complications from COVID, Parkinson's disease, and his lawyers say, dismal prison conditions. And a little before that, I had got one letter from him in a very shaky hand. He probably couldn't keep the pen steady.

His co-defendant, Sudha Bharadwaj, she told me that she and Swami used to send letters back and forth between their prisons. When I visited her, she actually dug out the last letter that she received from him before he died. In fact, if you just hang on for a minute, I'll just get it for you. Of course I will. This is the front part. So this is Downs Valley. And in this letter, Swami was concerned about the health of the other defendants. Very much hope both of you will be well soon. Then he says, we all have to outlive the critical period. We all have to outlive the critical period we're going through.

A lot of people are in solidarity with us, but finally we are the ones to plow through the rugged field. We are the ones to plow through the rugged field. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We have to outlive. We didn't outlive. We have to outlive, she says. Because her friend's Dan Swami didn't. At a Jesuit chapel in northern Mumbai, I met one of the last people to see Father Swami alive.

There were prison guards in his hospital room, but they let in a fellow priest, Father Fraser Mascarenas, who says he found Swami at the end at ease and unafraid. The fact is that he was totally confident of the constitution and the law. Confident that the rule of law would prevail. India is really in danger now. All the democratic structures have been compromised. And so it's only the integrity of the elections which we are depending on now.

So wish us well in India. We are fighting for democracy of our country. Fighting for democracy, he says, in the world's largest one. Thank you, Lauren, for bringing us the voice of the late Stan Swamy. Even if it's through a letter, it is such a powerful statement at this moment. Yeah, it is. What is the status of the case against the remaining defendants? So the charges against Swami have been dropped because of his death. His lawyers have filed a wrongful death lawsuit, though. They want the prison conditions investigated. They believe that he may have lived had he been given better care in prison.

Maybe he would have lived long enough to be able to clear his name. The other 15 defendants in this case are still waiting to do that for themselves. They're still awaiting trial, some of them six plus years on. Look, the wheels of Indian justice move very slowly. Even in cases that aren't as big and controversial as this one, there are no trial dates set. So the polls just closed yesterday, and now Narendra Modi is likely about to win his third term. If you could step back and take a look at the big picture, what does this story say about the future of democracy in India. It says that Modi remains very popular in India, despite this scandal and despite big questions about his commitment to democratic values. Maybe it shows the rise of illiberal democracy,

you know, leaders who are democratically elected but have some autocratic tendencies, whether it's in India or Turkey or the Philippines or Hungary, or even in the U.S. with the case of Donald Trump, who has used autocratic language. This is also a test for the Biden administration, though. I mean, Washington sees India as a democratic bulwark against China. And Washington has also grown closer to India in recent years, despite concerns about Modi's human rights record. So will the Biden administration or a possible Trump administration come next election? Will the U.S. speak up for human rights in India?

That's NPR's Lauren Freyer. Thank you so much. You're welcome thanks for having me this episode was produced by Justine Yan and edited by Jenny Schmidt James Willits mastered the episode Emily Bogle is our visuals editor thanks to freelance producer

Shweta Desai and NPR international desk editors Vincent Nee and Hannah Block. The Sunday Story team includes Abby Wendell and Andrew Mambo. Our supervising producer is Liana Simstrom and Irene Noguchi is our executive producer. I'm Aisha Roscoe. Up First is back tomorrow with all the news you need to start your week. Until then, have a great rest of your weekend.