The Sunday Story: An Indian Political Scandal

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🗓️ 2 June 2024

⏱️ 32 minutes

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Summary

Starting in 2018, sixteen people were arrested in India for allegedly plotting to assassinate Prime Minister Narendra Modi. They included professors, a poet, trade unionists and members of an improv acting troupe. Even an elderly Jesuit priest.

The evidence against them, discovered on their electronic devices, appears damning: minutes of terror cell meetings, emails to banned Maoist rebels and a letter suggesting a suicide attack on Modi.

Today, fifteen defendants continue to await trial. They all say they were falsely accused and that the evidence against them was fabricated and planted by hackers in order to silence them. Digital forensic investigators not only agree but say Modi's own government may be involved.

In this episode of The Sunday Story, NPR's Lauren Frayer follows the twists and turns of what Indian police say was a complex plot to sabotage Modi's government, and that defendants say was a setup. One of the defendants, the Rev. Stan Swamy, died while fighting to clear his name.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Aisha Roscoe and this is a Sunday story. After six weeks of voting, the polls closed
0:06.4	last night in India, the world's most populous democracy. Results are due out this week.
0:13.4	The current Prime Minister, Nereindra Modi, is expected to win a third term.
0:17.8	Modi Kaleh.
0:19.8	Samhidhame, Serbo-Pboe. Modi Kelle,
0:24.2	Baba Saabambirk
0:25.4	that bhara kibhana Serboeharih.
0:29.2	But there have been big questions about how Modi and his Hindu nationalist party have held on to power.
0:36.5	In the lead up to this election, authorities jailed one of Modi's top rivals and froze
0:41.8	the bank accounts of a political party running against him.
0:45.0	And in recent years, Modi's government has even been accused of assassinating its critics abroad.
0:51.0	I'm pursuing credible allegations of a potential link between agents of the government
0:57.6	of India and the killing of a Canadian citizen.
1:02.2	Since 2018, NPR's Lauren Freier has been following the twist and turns of another
1:08.0	ongoing political scandal for Modi.
1:11.1	It started with a civil rights campaign and it led to allegations that academics and human rights activists were engaged in a conspiracy to assassinate Prime Minister Modi.
1:24.0	It's a story that involves outspoken activists, secret documents,
1:29.0	and accusations of targeted cyberhacking,
1:32.0	which investigators have tracked back to Modi's own government.
1:38.6	That's today's episode of the Sunday story, after the break.
1:50.0	Support for this podcast and the following message come from Wise, the app that makes managing your money in different currencies easy.
1:53.8	With WISE, you can send and spend money internationally at the mid-market exchange rate,
	...

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