The Sunday Story: An Indian Political Scandal

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.

For Modi, constitutionality is paramount. For Modi, Babasaheb Ambedkar's sentiment is paramount.

But there have been big questions about how Modi and his Hindu Nationalist party have held onto 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.

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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.

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.

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.

A planned political assassination like that gets really deep.

I know, right? And like, the twists and turns were so jaw-dropping in this. Honestly, I had just moved to India when this was going on and I attributed 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.

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 Swamy, 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 in retaliation for his advocacy on behalf of Indigenous people in Indian jails.

To face what is to be faced.

I'm 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.

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 Swamy. 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.

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.

I wasn't, and I had no clue about it at all.

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.

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.

You're listening to the Sunday story. We'll be right back.

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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 Sudha Bharadwaj, who does the same. Fighting these big mining companies on behalf of poor laborers like she was born in the U.S.

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.

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.

So I gave it up.

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.

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.

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 caste family from the south of India, Tamil Nadu. And there are these stories of him as a boy and a teenager. Rejecting his own privilege, distancing himself from relatives who physically beat their lower caste servants, he cut off ties with people who encouraged him to enjoy his own caste privilege.

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.

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 Sentinel One, researching cyber threat activity across the world.

Now, he says, this started as a phishing attack, and that means that as soon as Swamy 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. Swamy'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 Swamy's computer, too.

And a little before that, I had got one letter from him in a very shaky hand because probably he couldn't keep the pen steady.

His co-defendant, Sudha Bharadwaj. She told me that she and Swamy 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.

So this is Stan's writing. And in this letter, Swamy 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're going through. A lot of people are in solidarity with us, but finally, we are the ones to plough through the rugged field.

We have to outlive, she says, because her friends Dan Swamy didn't.

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 Swamy 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 to be able to clear his name.

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.

That's NPR's Lauren Frayer, 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.

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