India’s ongoing disinformation campaign: False news claiming dropped charges in Nijjar case spread by country’s media

Indian media outlets, widely regarded as a mouthpiece for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s BJP government, have launched yet another disinformation blitz, falsely claiming that all four men charged in the 2023 assassination of Canadian Sikh advocate Hardeep Singh Nijjar have been freed.

“All four accused remain in custody,” RCMP media relations officer, Sergeant Freda Fong, confirmed to The Pointer Friday. 

The RCMP confirmed that all charged individuals are scheduled to appear in court for a pre-trial conference on February 11, followed by another court appearance on February 12.

The false claims that the men had been freed while the Canadian case against them fell apart were initially spread on social media last week, including on accounts known to amplify misinformation in support of India’s Hindu-nationalist BJP government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The BJP government has bungled its response to allegations that senior officials, including the country’s Home Minister Amit Shah (the second highest ranking official after the Prime Minister and a longtime friend of Modi) were behind a plot to assassinate Sikh Canadians and at least one dual Canadian-American citizen living in New York who has led efforts to advocate for an independent Sikh nation in the Punjab region of India, home to the vast majority of the world’s Sikhs. 

The United States Justice Department has brought forward unsealed indictments that contain dozens of pages of overwhelming evidence (including transcripts of surveillance and wiretap recordings) against the Indian government in the plot to kill Mr. Nijjar in 2023 and the attempted assassination of the head of Sikhs For Justice, lawyer Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, in New York. 

Nijjar was shot multiple times while sitting in his vehicle outside a Gurdwara in Surrey, British Columbia. 

Despite the evidence made public by the heads of American law enforcement, the Indian government and the country’s mainstream media have repeatedly claimed no evidence has been presented. The same media outlets have spread information maligning Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

BJP Leader and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. His government is accused of orchestrating a plot to kill and harass Sikhs in Canada and the U.S.

(WikiMedia Commons)

Despite the repeated claims of India’s government and in the country’s media, that Canada has not provided evidence of a BJP-led plot to assassinate and harass Sikh Canadians, Trudeau and other officials have stated that evidence has been shared privately with Indian authorities, despite their efforts to avoid meetings.

Last year, when evidence was shared during a meeting in Singapore, afterward while Canadian officials were on their way back to Ottawa, the Indian government leaked news of the meeting which it had requested be kept confidential, claiming to Indian media that no evidence was presented. This was later refuted by Trudeau and other Canadian officials.

While the Indian government has claimed it will cooperate with Canada and the U.S. in their investigations, this has not been the case, with Indian officials repeatedly spreading false claims about the investigations. Indian media known to act for the BJP have simultaneously tried to discredit the cases and sow doubts about Canada’s alleged political motives. 

Indian human rights and international watchdog organizations have reported that tens of thousands of social media accounts are operated by the BJP government to spread disinformation.

In 2020, the Indian digital publication The Print reported that almost 18,000 Twitter accounts were set up to spread misinformation for the BJP, according to researchers. 

Media outlets such as Time have reported how the BJP has used WhatsApp (which is installed by more than 90 percent of smartphone users in India) to spread misinformation including dangerous fake news about religious minority communities such as Sikhs and Muslims. Instagram has also been cited as a common online platform used to spread propaganda and threatening messages in line with the BJP’s crackdowns on minority groups.   

The country’s mainstream media, including some of its most popular news broadcast outlets and largest newspapers amplified the false claims last week about the suspects in Mr. Nijjar’s case being freed due to a lack of evidence, spinning wild narratives about shortcomings in Canada’s criminal justice system. 

The Times of India, for example, reported on Friday that the Indian government “stated that Canada had not provided any specific evidence or formal communication regarding the case, despite the arrests of Indian nationals in connection with Nijjar’s murder.” This from one of the largest newspapers in the world, after Canadian officials had to publicly correct the record about the evidence which was presented to Indian officials in Singapore last year, and despite dozens of pages of evidence released in the unsealed U.S. indictments, which can be read here.

India’s mainstream media is commonly referred to as ‘Godi’ media, a word that means lap, as critics accuse many outlets of being lap dogs for Modi and his BJP government, which has aggressively attacked journalistic organizations that do not mouth the ruling Party’s policies.

The U.S. State Department published in its annual global Human Rights Report last year that, “there were numerous instances in which the [Indian] government or actors considered close to the government allegedly pressured or harassed media outlets critical of the government, including through online trolling. Media organizations and individual journalists expressing views critical of the government were sometimes subjected to arrest, threats, or intimidation. Police were reported to have raided the workplaces and homes of journalists and seized telephones, laptops, and other devices. There were also reports of terrorists and extremists perpetrating killings, violence, and intimidation against journalists critical of the government.”

It continued: “According to Human Rights Watch’s World Report 2023, ‘authorities intensified efforts to silence civil society activists and independent journalists by using politically motivated criminal charges, including terrorism, to jail those exposing or criticizing government abuses. The government used foreign funding regulations and allegations of financial irregularities to harass rights groups, political opponents, and others. Authorities also continued to stop activists and journalists critical of the government, from traveling abroad.’ Reporters Without Borders (RSF) in its 2023 World Press Freedom Index found ‘the violence against journalists, the political partisan media, and the concentration of media ownership all demonstrate that press freedom is in crisis in the world’s largest democracy’.”

The U.S. State Department, the World Press Freedom Index and Human Rights Watch have joined numerous critics inside and outside India, in questioning the country’s mainstream media for ignoring journalistic principles in favour of pro-BJP coverage. 

“Civil society organizations expressed concern that progovernment business interests buying stakes in media organizations could compromise media independence,” the U.S. State Department reported last year. 

Global Affairs Canada warned last year that "Modi-aligned" media outlets in India were spreading narratives to discredit the Canadian government, while evidence of the BJP’s orchestration of the plot to kill Canadians mounted.

The CBC in December analyzed social media posts spreading misleading and negative comments about the Sikh community in Canada, which were then repeated by many of the same mainstream Indian media outlets.  

Last week Indian outlets including India Today, Hindustan Times, ABP News and many others incorrectly reported that four charged Indian nationals, Karan Brar, Amandeep Singh, Kamalpreet Singh and Karanpreet Singh had been freed and that the Canadian case against them had fallen apart. 

"It's a joke," Inderjeet Singh Gosal, a Brampton resident and local representative of Sikhs For Justice (SFJ), told The Pointer. 

Brampton resident Inderjeet Singh Gosal, says Indian media propaganda against Sikhs driven by the government is nothing new.

(Sikhs For Justice)

"This is nothing new to us. India, since even 1984, has been spreading disinformation, claiming Khalistanis (those who support an independent Sikh homeland) are terrorists," he said. "This is all propaganda, and this is straight out of their playbook. This is what they do. They spread disinformation, and they spread propaganda. And like I said, this is nothing new. This is how they get information out there into the media. They have their networks; they have a lot of media under their control, so they can spread disinformation like this and make people believe that."

He said violent activities by the Indian government against Sikhs, even allegedly using transnational repression, is the reason India’s ranking in the global freedom index is very low. 

"I have full faith in the Government of Canada," Gosal told The Pointer. "And you know, these authorities, I feel like they're doing whatever they can to keep a Canadian citizen like myself safe, who is born in Canada. I was born here. And you know, I believe in them, and I believe they will do whatever it takes to keep any Canadian citizens safe. They're doing their best, and going forward…like I said before, I'm not going to stop doing what I'm doing." 

In a press release on January 9, the World Sikh Organization condemned the Indian media’s dissemination of false and misleading news about the suspects in the Nijjar case.

“India’s role in spreading disinformation targeting Canada and the Sikh community is both insidious and widespread,” WSO President Danish Singh said. “Completely false narratives are maliciously amplified without any verification in order to create confusion and distrust in Canada. We urge Canadian authorities to closely examine and investigate the Indian disinformation ecosystem active in Canada, including Canada-based proxies who actively amplify these false narratives,” Singh added.

“Sikhs have endured Indian disinformation campaigns for over four decades, paying a heavy price as a community. We call on Canadian media and the public to remain vigilant against these blatantly false attempts to distort the truth and undermine Canadian institutions. It is deeply ironic that India’s national motto, ‘Satyamev Jayate’ or ‘Truth Alone Triumphs,’ stands in stark contrast to its disinformation campaigns, where truth is often the first casualty.”

A blistering report, titled "Bad Sources: How Indian News Agency ANI Quoted Sources That Do Not Exist," was published in February 2023 by EU DisinfoLab, a European NGO dedicated to researching and combatting disinformation campaigns globally. It carefully documents how Asian News International (ANI), an Indian news agency, significantly contributes to the nation's information landscape. It supplies content to major media outlets in India, systematically citing fabricated sources, including non-existent organizations and experts, to push pro-BJP narratives.

The publication reported that ANI has long faced criticism for its reporting practices. Indian magazine The Caravan previously accused ANI of presenting the Indian government’s “version of truth.” The DisinfoLab also revealed in two prior investigations, in 2019 and 2020, that ANI had regularly quoted the defunct ‘EP Today’ and ‘EU Chronicles’, two fake media outlets that masqueraded as specialists in European affairs. These outlets were created to disseminate false information that supported the Indian government position on a range of foreign affairs policies and other controversial issues. 

Fake profiles of individuals cited as experts were created by the Indian news agency.

It was reported that ANI cited a think tank falsely quoting Canadian experts.

"A think tank that we had previously linked to the Srivastava group and that was legally dissolved in 2014, is now quoted about twice a week by ANI," the investigation found.

"The think tank’s website falsely mentions real Canadian university professors as participants in a conference that they never attended, even concocting false quotes by these academics. We had already observed this identity-hijacking pattern in our previous Indian Chronicles investigation."

Relations between India and Canada have become further strained since the RCMP alleged last year the Indian government is connected to the plot to kill and harass Canadians, according to evidence.

In October, the RCMP publicly warned Canadian Sikhs, particularly those advocating for religious and cultural autonomy in India, that the Indian government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has engaged in clandestine “criminal activity orchestrated by agents of the Government of India” that poses “consequential threats to the safety and security of Canadians and individuals living in Canada.”

It sent shockwaves from Ottawa to New Delhi, as Canada expelled six Indian diplomats including the highest-ranking official in the fall which was followed by similar, retaliatory action in New Delhi. 

“We will never tolerate the involvement of a foreign government threatening and killing Canadian citizens on Canadian soil—a deeply unacceptable violation of Canada’s sovereignty and of international law,” Trudeau said while responding to evidence provided by Canadian law enforcement and commenting on his government’s decision to expel the Indian diplomats.

The alleged Indian assassination plot to kill Canadian and American Sikhs set off a week of unrest across parts of Peel late last year, as Sikh advocates clashed with BJP supporters, highlighting the risks of India’s ongoing disinformation campaigns. 

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