What the death of a jailed priest says about India’s democracy : NPR

MUMBAI, India — Two days earlier than police lastly got here to arrest him, the Rev. Stan Swamy recorded a video of himself talking instantly into the digicam.

“They wish to put me out of the way in which,” the ailing 83-year-old Jesuit priest stated.

His voice sounded frail. However what he was saying was explosive.

The federal government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he stated, was focusing on him in retaliation for his advocacy on behalf of Indigenous folks in Indian jails. A sociologist in addition to a Roman Catholic clergyman, Swamy had lately revealed a research of three,000 folks jailed for being members of banned Maoist teams. He discovered that 97% of them had no such affiliation and that lots of their trials have been held with out legal professionals, in a language they did not perceive. He’d filed a case on their behalf within the state courtroom of Jharkhand, the place he lived. All of this had embarrassed the federal government, he stated.

Swamy’s workplace had since been raided a number of occasions. Police hauled away a loaner laptop computer he’d lately began utilizing after which got here again for his outdated desktop pc. They interrogated him for 15 hours over 5 days, he stated, a couple of terrorism plot he knew nothing about.

“Allow us to hope that some human sense will prevail,” he stated. “And if it doesn’t, I’m prepared.”

That video was recorded on Oct. 6, 2020. Two days later, Swamy was arrested, then imprisoned and repeatedly denied bail. Lower than a 12 months later, he was lifeless.

Born Stanislaus Lourduswamy within the southern state of Tamil Nadu, the priest was considered one of 16 outspoken Modi critics who have been jailed, one after the other, within the aftermath of 2018 caste riots in western India. All have been charged with terrorism offenses and conspiracy in opposition to the state, after police investigating the riots uncovered what they described as a brazen plot to assassinate the prime minister.

Swamy’s 15 fellow prisoners included professors, legal professionals, commerce unionists and members of an improv theater troupe that carried out skits poking enjoyable on the authorities. All 16 denied the costs in opposition to them.

Swamy was accused of membership within the banned Communist Celebration of India (Maoist), the identical faction that a few of the Indigenous folks he helped have been accused of being in. For many years, Maoist guerrillas have recruited from India’s Indigenous tribes and waged an insurgency in opposition to the Indian state and its representatives — safety forces and elected leaders — in tribal areas the place Swamy labored.

The proof gave the impression to be damning: Letters and minutes of alleged terrorist cell conferences have been discovered on Swamy’s and his co-defendants’ computer systems. One of many letters proposed a suicide assault in opposition to Modi.

However the suspects, their legal professionals and impartial specialists who’ve reviewed the proof on this case say the prisoners have been framed. They are saying somebody hacked into the suspects’ telephones and laptops and planted pretend proof on them.

Digital forensics investigators hint the hack again to Modi’s authorities. Indian police and authorities officers deny that. However the case has drawn condemnation from Human Rights Watch, Amnesty Worldwide, Catholic cardinals and bishops, and plenty of different teams — in addition to scrutiny from a U.S. authorities fee and the United Nations.

“There have been circumstances of recordsdata being planted, after which like the following day, the arrests went down. You may go your entire profession on this trade and by no means discover one thing that is as apparent,” says Tom Hegel, a Washington-based cybersecurity skilled who reviewed proof on this case. “It is a slam-dunk. That is fabricated.”

Greater than six years after the beginning of this case, the 15 remaining suspects are nonetheless awaiting trial. Seven have been granted bail. Eight stay in jail. And Modi is predicted to win a 3rd time period, when election outcomes come out this week.

Swamy might have been the oldest particular person ever charged with terrorism in India. What occurred to him is emblematic of what’s occurring to India underneath a democratically elected chief with autocratic tendencies. Underneath Modi, India has not solely stripped away authorized protections for minorities and people who search to defend them. It has additionally allegedly used cyberwarfare to assault them and silence them — with impunity.

This story has percolated for greater than six years. A lot of the digital forensics proof obtained by NPR and revealed right here has additionally appeared in Indian media. However regardless of outrage from human rights teams and criticism from the United Nations, the US and Catholic Church officers, there was no reexamination of this case by Indian authorities.

Erosion of democracy on the earth’s largest one

Authorities-sponsored cyberhacking could also be frequent in authoritarian international locations like China or Russia. However India is the world’s greatest democracy.

Some within the West might have been stunned by allegations that Indian diplomats have been concerned within the homicide of a Sikh separatist chief in Canada final 12 months and that different Indian officers might have been concerned in attempting to commit an identical crime on U.S. soil.

However Freedom Home, a Washington-based nonprofit that measures democratic decline, classifies India as solely “partly free.” It says these concerned in investigating human rights abuses “face threats, authorized harassment, extreme police power, and sometimes deadly violence” themselves. It additionally accuses Modi’s Hindu nationalist authorities of politicizing the judiciary and denying its opponents due course of.

In March, considered one of Modi’s prime rivals, Arvind Kejriwal, chief of the opposition Aam Aadmi Celebration, was jailed on bribery allegations. The biggest opposition occasion, the Indian Nationwide Congress, had its financial institution accounts frozen in a tax dispute. The timing of each, simply earlier than voting started within the present elections, prompted the U.S. State Division to name for “well timed authorized processes” for every. These financial institution accounts have since been unfrozen, and Kejriwal has since been freed on bail, after lacking a number of weeks of campaigning and voting, in elections that final six weeks and wherein voting occurs in phases.

Years earlier than this, although, the case that ensnared Swamy was an earlier bellwether for India’s democratic decline underneath Modi, his critics say.

It started with riots on the 2 hundredth anniversary of a uncommon victory for Indian minorities

The defendants on this case labored with three Indian minority teams: Indigenous folks, or Adivasis, who comprise greater than 8% of the inhabitants, or greater than 100 million folks; India’s 200 million Muslims, the nation’s largest non secular minority, more and more demonized and marginalized underneath Modi’s Hindu nationalist rule; and people on the decrease rungs of South Asia’s caste hierarchy, together with about 200 million Dalits, who was once known as “untouchable” and have lengthy been shunned by different castes as such.

On New 12 months’s Eve 2017, tens of hundreds of members of minority teams who supported left-wing events gathered en masse on the banks of the Bhima River in western India’s Maharashtra state. They have been there to have fun the 2 hundredth anniversary, the next day, of a uncommon battlefield victory for Dalits.

Within the 1818 Battle of Bhima Koregaon, a ragtag military of Dalits and different oppressed folks fought a military of upper-caste elites known as Peshwas — and gained. Greater than a century later, the battle impressed the writer of India’s Structure, B.R. Ambedkar, on his campaign to abolish untouchability and to jot down affirmative motion into Indian regulation.

However when minority members amassed on the riverbank on the final evening of 2017 and first day of 2018, there have been counterdemonstrations by members of upper-caste teams, most of whom supported Modi’s right-wing occasion. Violence erupted after hundreds of Dalits recited a pledge, in unison, vowing to not vote for Modi within the 2019 elections. They known as his political occasion — in energy on the time on the state and nationwide ranges — a Hindu supremacist group.

“On reflection, that pledge was essential, truly. … The federal government was scared,” says Anuradha Sonule, 35, a member of a theater troupe that carried out on the anniversary celebrations. “We gathered folks in amount.”

Her theater troupe, known as Kabir Kala Manch, is notorious in India. Most of its members are Dalit or Muslim activists, and a number of other had been out and in of jail for alleged affiliation with banned communist teams — even earlier than the 2018 battle anniversary.

Indians have historically voted alongside caste and clan strains. However Modi has modified that. He has sought to unite all Hindu voters. He comes from a lower-caste group himself, although his Bharatiya Janata Celebration (BJP) has upper-caste roots.

So it should have rattled the BJP, Sonule says, to see tens of hundreds of members of minority teams denouncing the prime minister on stay TV. This, in addition to the presence on the rally of well-known Modi detractors and dissidents, might have set in movement what occurred subsequent, she says.

A day after that pledge, on Jan. 1, 2018, riots broke out between rival demonstrators in villages alongside the Bhima River. Vehicles have been burned. Neighbors attacked each other alongside caste strains. No less than one particular person was killed, and dozens have been injured. It was by no means clear who began it.

Who was behind the riots?

One of many politicians who led that anti-Modi pledge from a stage on the rally believes the violence was not spontaneous.

“This was preplanned, and the federal government was concerned in it,” insists Prakash Ambedkar, Dalit chief B.R. Ambedkar’s grandson. Prakash Ambedkar leads a Dalit political occasion and has served three phrases in India’s Parliament.

He accuses the Maharashtra state department of Modi’s BJP of instigating the violence on the Bhima River after which blaming it on left-wing opponents — with a purpose to silence them forward of the 2019 election.

The state department of the BJP didn’t reply to NPR’s request for remark. However in an affidavit filed in courtroom, it stated the violence was a part of a left-wing conspiracy to show Dalits — a bunch the BJP had been making inroads with — in opposition to the occasion.

Police initally arrested two upper-caste males within the days after the riots, for allegedly instigating them. However a couple of week later, they have been launched and the circumstances in opposition to them dropped. Then police arrested three members of Sonule’s left-wing theater troupe, and a brand new idea emerged.

“Someplace alongside the way in which, police stopped wanting into all the opposite complaints and targeting this one criticism that stated the violence was a results of a large conspiracy by underground left-wing parts,” says Shalini Gera, a lawyer for one of many different defendants. “And that is when the police began including terror prices.”

The suspects have been charged underneath India’s Illegal Actions (Prevention) Act, which permits authorities to grab property and maintain terrorism suspects with out bail. The U.S. State Division has cited the regulation in annual experiences on India’s “important human rights points.”

Because the investigation handed from native to federal authorities, they solid a wider web. They began arresting individuals who had previous contact with rally attendees however weren’t current themselves. These included a few of India’s most well-known human rights activists — now often known as the BK-16.

Stan Swamy was considered one of them.

Swamy had by no means been to Bhima Koregaon. That did not matter

Greater than a 12 months after the 2018 riots, Swamy known as the Mumbai regulation places of work of an outdated acquaintance, Mihir Desai. The 2 had met within the Nineteen Eighties, engaged on lawsuits filed by the households of coal miners killed on the job in japanese India.

“He requested me, ‘What is that this Bhima Koregaon factor?’ He had no clue about it,” Desai recollects. “However the police have been at his door, interrogating him about it.”

On the time of the January 2018 riots, Swamy was on the opposite aspect of the nation, at his dwelling within the japanese state of Jharkhand. However police have been investigating whether or not he — as a distinguished advocate for Indigenous folks — might have incited his followers to violence, even from afar. In the summertime of 2018, his identify began popping up on nationalist TV channels. Information anchors known as him an enemy of the state.

In October 2020, Swamy made his selfie video, denouncing the allegations.

“What is occurring to me just isn’t distinctive. We’re all conscious how distinguished intellectuals, legal professionals, writers, poets, activists, pupil leaders are all put into jail simply because they’ve expressed their dissent or raised questions in regards to the ruling powers of India,” he stated into the digicam. “I’m a part of it, a part of the sport, and able to pay the worth.”

Two days later, on Oct. 8, 2020, he was arrested.

How the Indian authorities sees this

Native and state police and federal authorities didn’t reply to a number of NPR requests for remark over a interval of practically three years, between Swamy’s July 2021 demise and the time of this publication. Neither did the Indian equal of the FBI, the Nationwide Investigation Company. A BJP spokesperson declined to talk with NPR on the report. The occasion has publicly denied any wrongdoing.

To Indian authorities, the Bhima Koregaon riots have been a thread they pulled at, which unraveled and led them to what they declare was an even bigger plot by leftists to overthrow Modi’s authorities. Not solely have been Maoists waging guerrilla battle in opposition to the Indian state within the jungle, as they’d for years, however they now additionally had sympathizers — sleeper cells — in academia and human rights circles.

It is doable — maybe even possible — that Swamy did have contact with Maoists in the middle of his work with India’s Indigenous tribes, his former colleagues say.

“It is tough to inform who’s a Maoist! You manage a gathering of 30, 40, 50 folks, and somebody will later say one of many guys within the again was a Maoist,” says the Rev. Joe Xavier, a fellow Jesuit and longtime affiliate of Swamy. “But when or when he discovered, Stan would have lower ties. He would by no means knowingly affiliate with them.”

Folks near him say it is unlikely, although, that Swamy may have typed up notes for Maoists within the type of the alleged minutes of terrorist cell conferences discovered by police on his pc. They are saying he did not have the dexterity. He had Parkinson’s illness.

“He was a one-finger, gradual typist,” his lawyer Desai says.

Digital forensics analysts outdoors India say the proof was planted by hackers

Swamy’s computer systems are nonetheless in Indian police custody. However cloned copies have been shared along with his legal professionals, who then shared the information with Arsenal Consulting, a Massachusetts-based digital forensics agency that has carried out evaluation in different high-profile circumstances, together with the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. (The agency says Swamy’s loaner laptop computer was clear; that will clarify why, legal professionals say, police returned to grab his desktop pc, on which incriminating proof was ultimately discovered.)

Arsenal shared its professional bono evaluation of Swamy’s desktop pc with NPR. (It was first shared with The Washington Publish in late 2022. Different experiences have been shared with Wired journal.)

The Arsenal report about Swamy’s pc is a 25-page technical doc that protection legal professionals have submitted to the courtroom. It concludes: “This is likely one of the most severe circumstances involving proof tampering that Arsenal has ever encountered.”

Listed below are the report’s fundamental findings:

It began as a phishing assault. On Oct. 19, 2014, Swamy opened a doc that had been weaponized with NetWire, a sort of malware. For practically 5 years after that, the hacker or hackers had entry to Swamy’s pc. Beginning in July 2017, the hacker dropped dozens of recordsdata right into a hidden folder on Swamy’s machine. These are the alleged minutes of terrorist cell conferences that police later uncovered. Swamy by no means opened them and was in all probability unaware they have been there. Whoever did that is in all probability the identical hacker who infiltrated the computer systems of not less than three of Swamy’s co-defendants. The hacker used the identical malware, linked to the identical servers. In Swamy’s case, although, the hacker inserted profanity — in English — into the coding. The evening earlier than Swamy’s computer systems have been confiscated by police, in June 2019, the hacker tried to cowl up his or her digital footprints — erasing malware and surveillance knowledge.

Desai, the lawyer, calls that timing “very, very, suspicious.””The one individuals who knew his home was going to be raided was the Nationwide Investiga[tion] Company,” he says. “So except they knowledgeable the hacker — or except they’re the hacker — this does not make sense another means.”

The NIA didn’t reply to NPR’s request for remark. In courtroom paperwork, it alleges Swamy was extra pc savvy than he appeared, and took steps to encrypt his personal messages. However the NIA has not publicly addressed the timing of its raids.

Arsenal was unable to determine the hacker or hackers. However another person may.

The work of this hacker regarded acquainted

Tom Hegel, a Washington-based menace researcher with the cybersecurity agency SentinelOne, reviewed Arsenal’s evaluation of Swamy’s desktop pc and stated the hacker appears to be like acquainted. It appears to be like like a “menace actor” — a person or a collective — he has tracked for years and given a reputation: ModifiedElephant.

“It is virtually like a safari. I pursue completely different species of hackers and categorize them,” Hegel explains. “We created the ModifiedElephant menace actor identify to consult with a decade of exercise in opposition to 100 people in India, unfold throughout journalism, human rights defenders, academia — and even authorized professionals tied to the BK-16.”

Simply as with Swamy, the ModifiedElephant hacker usually makes use of phishing to plant malware on a sufferer’s gadget. As soon as it will get entry, it operates like a distant administrator, taking up the pc, sending emails and planting recordsdata, or erasing present ones.

“Then the police arrest these people and do their quote-unquote ‘forensics’ on the gadgets and say, ‘Hey, we discovered this Phrase doc that is a plot to assassinate PM Modi — you are responsible of that,'” Hegel says. “Nevertheless, you possibly can show that file got here by way of the session that was operated by this ModifiedElephant attacker. This could by no means be carried out legitimately by a consumer.”

After monitoring a decade of ModifiedElephant’s conduct and contemplating the identities of its targets, Hegel says he thinks it is a group of hackers who’re both a part of the Indian authorities or third-party contractors employed by it.

“All of this does tie again, excessive confidence, to the Indian authorities,” he says.

The Indian authorities denies that. Officers from the BJP declined to talk on the report. However based mostly on background conversations with these conversant in their pondering, their view seems to be this: Even when Swamy was hacked, there is not any proof it got here from the prime minister, or that Modi even knew about it. It might have been some renegade hacker, unaffiliated with the occasion or authorities, whom authorities officers do not know.

Hegel is considered one of a number of cyberthreat specialists who’ve reviewed Arsenal’s findings, carried out their very own professional bono evaluation of proof on this case and shared their conclusions with NPR. Additionally they embody officers from the Citizen Lab, a nonprofit affiliated with the College of Toronto, and Amnesty Worldwide’s know-how department, known as Amnesty Tech.

Hegel, from SentinelOne, traced the malware discovered on Swamy’s desktop pc to backup e-mail addresses and restoration telephone numbers related to the cops who arrested Swamy. The server and IP deal with that these cops use was additionally utilized by the hacker, he says.

“That was the smoking gun,” Hegel says. “It is just like the crown jewel of examples of this operator having a way of impunity.”

Researchers from the Citizen Lab additionally matched a selfie used because the profile picture on the WhatsApp account for a kind of telephone numbers to the face of a police officer who appeared at information conferences involving the BK-16 and in information footage of the arrest of considered one of Swamy’s co-defendants.

NPR has not been capable of independently confirm the identification of anybody who allegedly hacked Swamy.

In India, response has been muted

A lot of this has already been reported in India. However there hasn’t been a lot blowback. No person has resigned. Police haven’t been fired and even investigated. They have not responded to NPR’s interview requests about Swamy, going again to his 2021 demise, or in regards to the alleged hacking, going again to September 2023.

In the meantime, Indian legal professionals and journalists wanting into this case are amongst dozens or a whole lot of individuals in India who’ve discovered Pegasus adware on their gadgets. It is a surveillance instrument that is made by an Israeli firm and used solely by governments. The Indian authorities has refused to substantiate or deny whether or not it makes use of Pegasus. (NPR has not but submitted its personal gadgets for evaluation of whether or not they might have been contaminated with Pegasus throughout this reporting.)

No less than one of many BK-16 defendants, activist Rona Wilson, had a smartphone that was contaminated with Pegasus earlier than his arrest, in response to a separate forensic evaluation by Amnesty Worldwide’s Safety Lab.

“There’s a actually worrying, disturbing sample of adware assaults in India,” says Becka White, a campaigner with Amnesty Tech. “It is a part of a broader sample of dissent being crushed, freedom of expression being stifled, folks talking reality to energy and being focused.”

NPR is quoting specialists outdoors India right here as a result of many within the nation stated they have been too scared to talk on the report.

In recent times, Indian tax authorities have raided the BBC’s places of work in Delhi and Mumbai, frozen financial institution accounts for worldwide charities and compelled Amnesty Worldwide in another country. An Indian expatriate working in Europe for a giant human rights group declined to talk to NPR for the radio model of this story except their voice may very well be disguised.

Swamy died earlier than he may clear his identify. His co-defendants are nonetheless awaiting justice

In the summertime of 2021, one other of the BK-16, Sudha Bharadwaj — a mathematician turned lawyer who additionally labored with India’s Indigenous tribes — obtained a letter from Swamy, written in a shaky hand. They have been each incarcerated, at completely different prisons, the place letters arrived after an extended delay. Bharadwaj was launched on bail in December 2021 and confirmed the letter to NPR.

Swamy started the letter by asking in regards to the well being of his co-defendants. Indian prisons are notoriously overcrowded, and this was on the top of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Hoping each of you can be effectively quickly,” Swamy wrote, referring to Bharadwaj and Shoma Sen, one other of the BK-16 who was in the identical girls’s jail. (Sen was freed on bail in April after practically six years behind bars.) “All of us should outlive the essential interval we’re going by way of. Lots of people are in solidarity with us. However lastly, we’re those to plough by way of the rugged discipline.”

“Now we have to survive,” Bharadwaj repeats the phrases as she reads aloud Swamy’s final letter.

They have been a few of his final phrases.

Later that summer time, Swamy’s well being deteriorated. He was transferred out of jail and right into a Mumbai hospital. On July 5, he died of cardiac arrest, problems from COVID-19, Parkinson’s and, his legal professionals say, dismal jail situations. He was 84.

His demise made headlines in India and overseas. His physique was cremated, in accordance with hospital guidelines throughout the pandemic. A few of his ashes have been taken on tour throughout India after which scattered at Bagaicha, a social motion middle for Indigenous folks in Jharkhand the place Swamy had lived. His Catholic order, the Jesuits, held a memorial ceremony in Rome.

Swamy’s demise “will perpetually stay a stain on India’s human rights report,” Mary Lawlor, the U.N. particular rapporteur on human rights defenders, stated in a press release.

A few of Swamy’s ashes have been additionally buried in a small cemetery, ringed by brilliant pink bougainvillea flowers, outdoors a Jesuit chapel in northern Mumbai, close to the hospital the place he died. That is the place NPR met one of many final folks to see him alive.

Jail guards had been current in Swamy’s hospital room. However they allowed considered one of his fellow monks to enter. The Rev. Frazer Mascarenhas says he discovered Swamy calm and unafraid.

“He was completely assured of the regulation,” Mascarenhas recollects. “He was assured that the Indian judiciary and structure would see him and his folks by way of.”

Freelance producer Shweta Desai contributed to this story from Mumbai and Pune, India.