Since 2018, a growing number of popular and respected social workers, human rights activists, scholars, poets, lawyers, artistes, and dissenters have been incarcerated in India under the dubious claim that they are in cahoots with the Maoist movement, in what has come to be widely known as the ‘Bhima Koregaon’ case. Key to this claim were data purported to have been “discovered” by investigators and presented as “evidence.” In the last few months, as some of these targeted individuals marked two years or more under incarceration, a digital forensics company in the U.S. proved conclusively that the evidence in question on the hard drive of one of the accused was indeed implanted remotely using spyware by a malicious agent, unbeknownst to the computer user, human rights activist Rona Wilson, one of the accused.

Join political scientist Aparna Sundar, anthropologist Balmurli Natrajan, and computer scientist Jedidiah Crandall, as they offer their insights into what these developments may mean for the future of democracy and dissent in today’s India.

Panelists

Aparna Sundar, University of Toronto

Balmurli Natrajan, William Paterson University

Jedidiah Crandall, Arizona State University