RANA AYYUB
On the 8th of November at around 1.20 am in the night when I was deep in sleep, my niece woke me up to the incessant ringing of the phone. “Something is wrong” she said as she handed over the phone to me. It felt like an avalanche had hit my android phone. Video calls, voice calls, text messages, data calls, whats app messages, my phone was on fire. As I stared at the phone the messages kept rolling, one of them said “Your number has been leaked”. I reached out for the beta blocker on my side table to aid the palpitation and asked my niece to wake up my mother. There were password and one time verification codes from home loan companies, banks, matrimonial websites, porn website registration requests, online shopping, and real estate projects. The messages ranged from sexually explicit to death threats to just pure intrigue. Each time I would disconnect a voice call, a whats app video call request would pop up.
A friend texted me that a right wing twitter handle ‘HinduphobiaWatch’ (@hinduphobiawatch) had doxxed me and asked people to send me links to horror films. Multiple right-wing handles took sadistic pleasure and replied to the Twitter handle saying that they were doing the needful, others asked if they could ask me for midnight services on the call. A friend messages me an archived link to the tweet to complain to the police in case the Twitter handle later deleted the account. I switched off my phone. What else could they have accessed, it was my official number that had been doxxed. I immediately reported the doxxing to twitter and got a response from them that they would look into the matter on priority. Till today I have not heard from twitter.
The next day I went to the cyber crime department at the Bandra Worli Complex in western Mumbai. The cops first said that the complaint did not fall in their jurisdiction and then grudgingly took a complaint with no commitment to register an offence. The following day I went to the police station close to my house. I sat for about eleven hours, giving details of the calls, the messages, the obnoxious images, the rape and death threats to me and my family. As I sat with the police officers, the calls and texts continued to drop on my phone. Meanwhile, one of India’s leading fact-checking website Alt-News published an investigation that the man who doxxed me and continued to post abusive language against me on Twitter also helped run the social media campaign of the ruling party in India, the BJP. alt news
The investigation also revealed the name of the person along with his place of work and other identity. The cops told me they had read the piece and such investigations take time. The next day I appeared in a court in Mumbai in a defamation case for an article I wrote in the year 2009 against a right-wing hindu nationalist organisation and their alleged involvement in a terror attack. This was not the only case I was to appear. In the same week, I appeared in another case in northern India to secure bail in a case where an arrest warrant was sent along with officers at 8 pm in Mumbai when I was in Toronto to receive the international journalist of the year award.
Rana Ayyub’s Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Meanwhile, the twitter handle @Hinduphobiawatch kept on spreading hate and misinformation against me. He posted a photoshopped tweet on his time line that said “I hate India and I hate Indians”. Then he went on to tweet other misinformed fake news and distorted tweets implying that I hate Hindus in India. He further posted an old video where I am seen with my lawyers alleging that it was the video of my arrest by the police. Through this entire episode, I kept sending the cops all the material posted on social media as well as reported them to twitter with no respite in sight. In response to my filing a case against those who doxxed me, an Indian lawyer who calls herself a proud Hindu filed a complaint against me with Delhi police claiming that I am spreading anti-Hindu hatred in India citing the same misinformation spread by the twitter handle that doxxed me(https://x.com/
The worst was yet to come. My phone would still not stop ringing. I finally picked up one of the phone calls and the person asked for my escort rate-card, he laughed and then disconnected the phone. I broke down. I called the police officer incharge of registering my case “Is this how you plan to protect women in a country considered by some to be the rape capital of the world? Will you just stay quiet through my ordeal as my address, my nieces photographs were leaked on twitter. Are you waiting for me to be killed before they take a candle light march in solidarity with me?” I was referring to the murder of my journalist friend Gauri Lankesh who was shot dead by alleged Hindu nationalists in the year 2017. The same year she had also published my book Gujarat Files in a regional language (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/
The officer promised to take action. They said they had summoned a few people but let them off after finding that they were just seventeen year old innocent young boys who were not sure who they were calling. Innocent young boys callling a journalist at 3 am, i trailed off.
Meanwhile, they said they were still trying to figure the IP addresses of the main culprits.
Before I could even take solace in the half hearted reassurance, I was doxxed again. This time my email password, my passport scans, my residence address, my visas were shared by a twitter handle with a significant number of followers. Since my password was the name of an american author the twitter handle tagged the authorand asked what was his relationship with me. The same person claimed that I was on a live sex cam on a porn website.
Another tweet appeared, this time by a twitter handle followed by the Prime Minister of India that shared an AI generated deepfake porn image of me, a picture that went viral.
The Prime Minister of India received a great deal of criticism when right wing influencers known for online harassment of critics were invited for his swearing in ceremony earlier this year. The twitter handle @xBlitz007 said he was proud to be followed on twitter by the Prime Minister of India. Sharing my AI generated porn image he wrote in Hindi “They don’t just become investigative journalists overnight, they need to sleep with a tonne of men to be where they are”
When this was brought to the attention of twitter, the social networking platform run by Elon Musk suggested that it had not violated their privacy policy. In a country like India where a great deal of virtue is placed on a woman’s character, I was the subject of a titillating right wing ecosystem with millions of followers. Some asked how many men did I have to taste to become a successful investigative journalist, others accused me of honey trapping officials to get my story. My journalism, my achievements were sexualised and discredited, not for the first time.
Rana Ayyub’s Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
As I write this piece, a lawyer who claims to be a Hindu nationalist has petitioned Delhi high court against me for being anti-Hindu and anti-India citing some of the fake news and misinformed tweets by the handle @Hinduphobiawatch. The lawyer says she filed the case against me to protect the Hindu faith. The irony does not end here. The same twitter handle that is leaking my personal information is now celebrating that I will be taught a lesson by the court (using the most sexualised terms for me)
The porn image, my personal details are now in the public domain, am a free for all. A virtual lynch mob for whom I am construed as an anti-national wants to ravage my family including my seven-year-old nephew whose image they have morphed with Osama Bin Laden. A cop who I inquired with recently on the status of my criminal complaint said in good humor “If the government changes, you might see the culprits behind bars”
The harassment and the violation of my personal life is not restricted to just non state actors. I am fighting at least five different cases. At any given point my email either has a summon or a notice. Each time the door bell rings, I wonder if it is the postman who is home to deliver a brown envelope or cops who are home with a warrant.
India is ranked on the 156th position of the World Press Freedom index by Reporters sans frontier which published this report on my cyber harassment on the 27th of November. (https://rsf.org/en/rana-
Two months ago on a reporting trip to Manipur, the north eastern state of India neighbouring Mynamar, I was surveilled by police officials. A report by the Committee to Protect journalist spoke to multiple sources in Manipur who corroborated this information (https://cpj.org/2024/11/
From cops and intelligence officials who visited my homestay (where many journalists have stayed in the past), to tailing me throughout my trip including to a washroom without electricity in a village (I had to flash my sanitary napkin to the alleged officials who were tailing me )
The calls on my phone did stop throughout the trip, many claiming to be intelligence officials who were trying to look after my ‘safety’
At the Manipur airport, I snatched the phone from an official who was trying to covertly record me. His badge said ‘state intelligence’. The phone had videos of me entering the Manipur airport. I took out my phone from my bag and pressed the recording button and asked “Sir, why are you recording me”. The officer said sorry and walked away. At a roadside stall on the highway when I stepped down to get tea with my driver, two men came and took the chair next to me and later followed me till my destination. They say journalism sources are sacrosanct. How do journalists meet activists, sources when you are being tailed knowing that you will compromise the security of those who interview ? More important question would be -What does the state wish to hide
In a country that has been sliding dangerously towards a majoritarian trend, where members of the minority community are lynched with impunity, where Indian Muslims are living their own Jim Crow moment, I have been made acutely aware of the multiple identities that I wear that put me at risk as a journalist in India. A woman, an outspoken woman, a critic of the government and a Muslim. I speak the same language as other journalists in India but my words are picked up and weaponised against me in court cases because of my Muslim-ness. My journalism is not viewed through the same lens of objectivity or that matter of criticism as my fellow non Muslim journalists because I am presumed disloyal to my country by virtue of my faith.
Rana Ayyub’s Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
How does a journalist then report in the World’s largest Democracy where tech platforms like X have only enabled and amplified the sexualised assault against me and the female members of my family. In a country with the highest track record of crimes against women, what will it take for the cops to arrest the cuplrits who have wrecked my peace of mind.
It’s not just India. Threats to journalists are on the rise in democracies around the world— including the United States. Last month, the Committee to Protect Journalists issued a report noting a sharp rise in attacks on journalists in just one year.
The report also notes an increase in online harassment against journalists who are women and racial or religious minorities
They say journalists should never become the story and as a journalist I have tried to platform marginalised voices and tell their stories through my reports,op-eds and investigations. I spend more time with lawyers, accountants, in courts, with journalism organisations and by the time I get a breather, I am emotionally drained, often with episodes of a mental breakdown . And in between when I do manage to make time to report, I am either surveilled upon or called an Islamist out to discredit India on an international platform with my reportage.
source : ranaayyub.substack.com