An American journalist has decided to take legal action against the Indian government after authorities revoked his Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) status and barred him from travelling to the country.
All this happened after Raphael Satter wrote an article ‘How an Indian startup hacked the world’ about a prominent Indian businessman, Rajat Khare, back in November, 2023.
In December 2023, Satter, who is a cybersecurity journalist with Reuters based in Washington DC, was told by India’s Ministry of Home Affairs that his OCI card had been cancelled. He was accused by the government of publishing work that “maliciously” damaged India’s reputation. Satter, who obtained OCI status through marriage, can no longer travel to India, where his family members live.
Satter’s case is not an isolated one but part of a growing trend in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s India. However, it does add to growing concerns over the revocation of OCI privileges, particularly for journalists, activists and academics critical of the Modi government.
Modi rebranded the former People of Indian Origin (PIO) card as the OCI card with much fanfare, creating a misleading impression among the Indian diaspora that it conferred “citizen-like” privileges. In reality, OCI cards are being granted and revoked at the government’s discretion, often targeting journalists, academics and activists critical of the administration. Notably, there were not too many such cases under the previous PIO system.
The OCI cards which were originally meant to facilitate travel and business in India for people of Indian origin with foreign nationality and their families, have now — in a way — become weaponsied by the government.
The Human Rights Watch (HRW) has described such actions as part of a broader pattern of “politically motivated repression” under the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
According to HRW’s Asia Director Elaine Pearson, the Indian government reprisals against members of the diaspora who criticise the BJP’s abusive and discriminatory policies show the authorities’ growing hostility to criticism and dialogue.
“The authorities seem intent on expanding politically motivated repression against Indian activists and academics at home to foreign citizens of Indian origin beyond India’s borders,” she added.
In 2021 alone, the Indian government downgraded the privileges of the 4.5 million OCI cardholders by re-categorising them as “foreign nationals”, and requiring them to seek special permission to carry out research and journalism, or visit any area in India listed as “protected”.
Over the past decade, the government has cancelled over 100 permits and deported some status holders for allegedly showing “disaffection towards the Constitution”. This has heightened concerns for OCI cardholders whether living in India or abroad, many of whom have older parents and other strong personal ties to India.
Many journalists and academic, including Time Magazine’s Aatish Taseer who grew up in New Delhi, French journalist Vanessa Dougnac who had lived in India for 22 years and University of Westminster professor Nitasha Kaul, were forced to leave the country after their OCI cards were revoked.
Author and journalist Taseer told TRT World that in September 2019, his mother messaged him and told him that he had received a letter from the Indian Ministry of Home Affairs. In the letter, Taseer was told that the government had revoked his OCI card. The letter said that he had 21 days to respond and contest the claims.
In November, after The Print reported that his OCI status was under review, the government publicly announced on X (then Twitter) that it had been revoked — this was the first time he had heard about it.
The decision followed the publication of his cover piece for Time magazine in May, just before the Indian elections, titled ‘India’s Divider in Chief’, which was highly critical of Modi’s actions while in power.
Modi responded to the article and said: “Time magazine is foreign, the writer has also said he comes from a Pakistani political family. That is enough for his credibility.”
The BJP said that the article was an attempt to malign Modi’s image and had accused Taseer, the son of Indian journalist Tavleen Singh and late Pakistani politician and businessman Salmaan Taseer, of pursuing Pakistani agenda.
For his part, Taseer did not think he would get this kind of backlash when he wrote the story. “Everyone was doing that kind of piece at the time. I was completely blindsided by the action,” he said.
“In my case, they [the BJP] ran a full campagin against me. The BJP spokesperon called me an ISI agent and they were using my father’s nationality — who I hadn’t met till I was 21 — as the cause,” said the journalist.
“They built this narrative of the enemy within. Unlike Raphael [Satter], I was living in India for 10 years before that. I had spent 30 out of 40 years there. All the good will that I had built was besmirched. I was made to look to suspect,” he added.
Taseer filed for review for the OCI during Covid19. According to him, the OCI — even more than the American green card — is just a visa. “It looks like something more meaningful but you can’t compel any government to give a visa — we can see this with Mahmoud Khalil’s case,” he said.
Exiled from his home, Taseer couldn’t go back when his grandmother passed away or when his step father got ill. His mother, who wrote about her son going into exile, is now 75.
According to Taseer, there is no way to go back home. “There is an insane level of scrutiny. I don’t see how I can comply with this. It is all silencing. Forget being a writer or journalist, even an independent person would not be able to fall in line like they want me to fall in line,” he said.
Going back for Taseer is now urgent. “There is no room for nostalgia. I have tons of friends and family but it has become very urgent and immediate. If something happened to my mother — who would care for her? Will I be able to? One has to reckon with the fact that my grandmother died without me being able to see her. We are scrambling to figure things out,” he added.
Talking about the OCI card, Taseer reiterated that in the current climate, it was just a visa.
“This is an easily sensitive and wounded government. People like us, in a sense, atleast we are safe, what about Umar Khalid, who is in jail,” he said.
“They have militarised this visa [OCI card]. They have managed to put anyone who poses a risk to the reputation of their government on notice,” he added.
Taseer shared that he’s had to steel his heart to any sentimental attachment to India, because the practical considerations of ageing parents has been so overwhelming.
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Court proceedings
According to The Guardian, Satter denies ever conducting journalism in India and has only travelled to the country to visit family.
While the government gave no specifics to Satter’s lawyers on how his work was a national security threat, his lawyers noted that his OCI was cancelled at the same time that a defamation case had been filed against him in India for a story his story on Appin, a cybersecurity company which Khare had co-founded.
On the same day, a judge in New Delhi, granted an injunction against the story, forcing it to be temporarily taken down. It was restored 10 months later.
While working on the story, Satter told The Guardian that he had received a series of threats made by individuals associated with the company.
According to his petition: “The petitioner and his employer, Reuters, began receiving threats from individuals linked to a company called Appin, which has hacked organisations in India and abroad”.
What is surprising is the fact that Satter wasn’t the only journalist following Khare and Appin — also not the only one who received legal notices. According to an investigation by Reporters Without Borders, at least 15 media outlets, including The New Yorker and the Sunday Times, investigating Appin received legal notices and five have been subjected to legal proceedings.
According to Reporters Without Borders, the magnitude of these gag lawsuits is “unprecedented”.
Satter’s first court hearing was this week in New Delhi. He told The Guardian that the Indian government’s decision to cancel his OCI had effectively cut him off from members of his family and a country he held in great affection and respect.
Satter believes that the decision was a “mistake or on a misunderstanding”. Explaining why he went to court, Satter said, he decided to go to court after he did not receive any response to his appeal made to the government more than a year ago.
Satter’s next hearing is on May 22.
The article appeared in the trt