I recently learned that a region known as the red corridor that spans over the eastern, central, and southern parts of India experiences considerable Naxalite–Maoist insurgency. These are also areas that suffer from the greatest illiteracy, poverty and overpopulation in modern India [1].
The news focuses on two activists who were jailed for allegedly plotting an insurgency in their country, and how the evidence is likely fake. However there is already a major insurgency in that country that is virtually unknown in the West.
i live in the red corridor you highlighted.
I agree with illiteracy, povery, but not overpopulation.
Naxalite's are popular for various reasons.
. they are popular in telengana because of oppression by muslims.
. they are popular in bihar because of cate based oppression.
. they are popular in andhra because of exploitation by landlords.
. also they are mainly dependent on forest area for shelter.
> they are popular in telengana because of oppression by muslims
Yeah No. I am from Telangana.
They are popular here because most of the land in not fertile enough and thus, there is poverty and general lack of development, compared to other parts of the state. Also, the workforce does not migrate much to other parts of the world for work.
It's not a coincidence that large areas of Bihar have seen reduced Naxalism, because their labor and workers have moved across India in search of jobs.
You will not find such thing happening in Odisha or Telangana.
The article links to another WaPo article that describes how these activists were targeted with malware emails used to install NetWire on their computer, which was then used to plant evidence.
This story was close to my heart.
Having grown with naxalite-maoist ideals, I used to rever them.
During 1940-1990s
Moaists did an phenomenal job in fighting for oppressed, they were solely responsible for minimum wage enforcement, stopping the exploitation of tribals.
They fought off razakars with armed guerilla groups and saved innocent women from getting raped and mutilated.
Post 1990s,
The land reforms, abolition of feudal landlord system, employment creation actually solved most of the problems the poor were facing.
Migration of people to urban areas increased.
Thus, The maoists lost their purpose, and started searching for monsters to fight.
Post 1990,
maoists are bunch of thugs living in forests
doing contract killings in their free time.
They claim to fight for poor, but they oppose anything that bring out poor tribal people out of their poverty.
In the last 10 years there were hunderds of incidents of maoists killing contractors laying roads to remote villages fearing the tribals will be out of their grip.
Hence I have zero sympathies for these 'activists' aka hired thugs.
This is a fairly standard derailment tactic in the Indian right wing ecosystem.
Begin the story be expressing deep familiarity with a situation they barely understand. Pretend to be neutral in the first half. Move on to attack a phantom target in the next half. These are variously Maoists, muslims, "rich" farmers, Sikhs, greta thunberg, forced religious conversions etc.
In this particular case pretend that the fabricated evidence linking social workers to Maoists is real and bury the lede in final sentence.
The planting of evidence story sounds unconvincing. There hasn't been any reason given who would have planted and for what reason. Some of the people assuming here it as a state sponsored stuff; but there is no such thing mentioned by the defendant. They are just trying to disprove the authenticity of electronic documents found on the computer of the accused.
The FIR was lodged by state police on January 8 2018 on behalf of local people complaining about the so called activist because of the violence that took place after provocative speech on 31dec. The case is then taken up by federal agency (NIA) because of the accused people's linkage found with a band militant organization. NIA states that there are sufficient oral evidence in addition to the electronic evidence which this report is trying to disprove (which itself is subject to verification in the court)
> The planting of evidence story sounds unconvincing. There hasn't been any reason given who would have planted and for what reason.
What? You honestly believe that trying to incriminate activists by planting fake evidence of assassination plots and associations with maoist groups is unconvincing and not a valid reason?
I mean, not so long ago India persecuted an activist who helped Greta Thunberg to the extent of arresting and accusing her of sedition just because the girl helped edit an online document that Greta Thunberg promoted.
> They are just trying to disprove the authenticity of electronic documents found on the computer of the accused.
There was no "trying". They found evidence that emails with malware were targeted at the accused activists, and they found evidence that said malware was used to plant evidence. Also, the "smoking gun" files were sloppily planted. I mean, the article states that incriminating docs were dropped on the windows folder without even having metadata showing they were ever accessed or opened in the computer.
> I mean, not so long ago India persecuted an activist who helped Greta Thunberg to the extent of arresting and accusing her of sedition just because the
girl helped edit an online document that Greta Thunberg promoted.
It wasn't just another document; it was linked with the planning and execution of violence that happened on 26 January Republic day in the capital (New Delhi) wherein the national symbols like Red Fort were invaded and damaged. Obviously police acted on the toolkit document and if not enough evidence were found, she'll be out of the trouble. btw, while working on the document her WhatsApp messages with Gretta also showed that she knew that she could get into trouble.
>> Disha (9:35 pm): Ok can you not tweet the toolkit at all..can we just not say anything at all for a while? I am gonna talk to lawyers. I am sorry but our names are on it and we can literally get UAPA against us.
> There was no "trying". They found evidence that emails with malware were targeted at the accused activists, and they found evidence that said malware was used to plant evidence.
Whatever they've found needs to be proven in court before it can be considered as evidence. Until then, as per the rule of law, it's just an opinion of the defendant.
> It wasn't just another document; it was linked with the planning and execution of violence (...)
No, not really. That's a very convenient story but an outright fabrication. Greta Thunber's document clearly did not laid out any plot. Greta's doc provide suggestions on how to protest the upcoming agriculture reform law, and the persecuted activist was jailed for editing two lines.
Moreover, the activist was arrested and accused of "wage economic, social, cultural and regional war against India", which quite clearly screams of the doingd of a fascist regime dedicated to oppress their citizens if they propose any form of criticism of the ruling regime.
> btw, while working on the document her WhatsApp messages with Gretta also showed that she knew that she could get into trouble.
The lack of self-awareness and desperation in your comment is very telling. I mean, of course she was concerned she could be persecuted: India's ruling regime is so oppressive that goes to the extent of charging people who edit two lines of a doc with sedition and waging war on India.
> No, not really. That's a very convenient story but an outright fabrication. Greta Thunber's document clearly did not laid out any plot. Greta's doc provide
suggestions on how to protest the upcoming agriculture reform law, and the persecuted activist was jailed for editing two lines.
It's a fact that the document had a plan for 26 January and it's also a fact that violence at a large scale took place that day in the capital. It's a sufficient ground for the police to pursue the people involved to investigate the links between both.
> The lack of self-awareness and desperation in your comment is very telling.
Injecting ad hominem in your arguments weakens your position. It demonstrates that the self-awareness has taken over by insecure ego, a sign of the conditioned mind.
> screams of the
doingd of a fascist regime dedicated to oppress their citizens if they propose any form of criticism of the ruling regime.
This comments certainly seem to come from a parallel reality because in the reality that I live, I come across media entities, people, leaders and even students, openly criticizing the so called current fascist regime, almost on a daily basis, even some times going to the length of threatening to harm the PM physically or break the nation.
I haven't come across even a single incident where people just got into jail for criticizing the current government.
Obviously when some violence happens and you're suspected to have some links, police will arrest you with charges it seems fit, but the law will take its own course and proceedings in the court shall decide eventually.
IN the fascist regime, judiciary won't have the freedom to let go the people the regime doesn't like; even in communist countries (good example is China), there's no independence of judiciary.
On the other hand, Indian judiciary takes pride in asserting its superiority wherever it can (just stating as a fact to demonstrate the independence of judiciary). I have only seen increased judicial activism during the current regime and certainly not decreasing of it.
> maoists are bunch of thugs living in forests doing contract killings in their free time. They claim to fight for poor, but they oppose anything that bring out poor tribal people out of their poverty.
This is a familiar dynamic, seen also with the Shining Path violence in Peru. A very well-regarded book, "The Other Path" was written by a Peruvian economist to refute the common radical narratives and lay down a pathway for development that actually provides wider benefits for the population.
This reads like an apologia for state fabricating evidence to jail social workers.
Labeling social workers or human rights activists Maoists, naxals, antinationals, planting evidence and jailing them without trial for years is the regime's modus operandi.
I take it that you are fine with social workers being imprisoned via fabricated evidence.
It looks like this account has been using HN primarily (actually exclusively) for political and ideological arguments. We ban accounts that do that (regardless of what they're arguing for or against) because it destroys what this site is for, and is explicitly against the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
I've therefore banned this account. Doing this on HN will eventually get your main account banned as well, so please don't do that.
> What has any of that got to do with the Indian government planting evidence on 'activists'?
This.
I mean, the article states that the Indian government was found planting evidence regarding assassination plots and forging associations with a maoist group, and suddenly the discussion revolves about maoist groups around the globe?
What next? Should we commend the Indian government for it's keen eye to pick fake stories to frame activists with?
Well, the entire article presumes the security audit does not have conflict of interest and Everyone here presumes its state planted and activists are falsely imprisioned.
This article is nothing but a hit piece trying to capitilize on the death news of one of the 'activist' and trying to create a sympathy wave.
I am not presuming anything. I am just giving backstory on what goes on on the ground.
Anyone who claims to fight for tribals rights are either maoists or chritian missionaries.
One of the so called activist (who died last week) was a Jesuit priest.
Yeah, Maoism caused circa 74 millions of deaths at home. Its very hard to believe they are treasuring human rights in any form. We should give India a break and let them fight terrorist incursion before people get hurt.
my comment is based on observation that, periodically articles criticizing indian govt is posted to a tech feed that too at a regular frequency as if its planned to push such articles to front page.
Even if i take the tech part of the above article into consideration, the title hints its the govt planted it, which is again not proved yet.
But there is tech involved here, isn't it? It has been established that the evidence was planted, regardless of who did it, this qualifies to be a tech post.
And as courts usually say, if you don't like it, don't watch it :)
the article does not shy away insinuating that govt planted it with out any evidence. Having watched maoists for the last 20 years, i doubt they are the good guys in this story.
Funny, most of these stories originate from the legacy media. Wonder what axe they have to grind? Modi belongs in the same boat as Putin since he does not pander to globalist interests.
It seems like state-sponsored hackers were used by a democratic government to plant digital evidence on the devices of people critical of high-ranking politicians. I think that’s interesting because we know state-sponsored hacking is increasing but this is one of the first cases I’ve read about where the targets/victims are individuals within the sponsoring country’s borders as opposed to entities outside of their borders.
the defendant lawyer hired a firm which found evidence the defendant is not guilty.
The pro bono part raises more suspicions. One of the accused activist died of old age in a top tier hospital, not exactly a poor client requiring pro bono work.
That is how the system works, conflicts of interest are presumed on both sides. The prosection wants people to say they're guilty, the defense wants people who say they aren't guilty.
The balance of evidence is against the prosecution now, and they can find their own expert witness if they disagree.
That being said, blatantly lying here would be a deathknell for the firm. Every case where they get involved will mean someone brings it up as a way to dismiss their testimony. It would take a staggering payment for most firms to even debate doing something like this intentionally. If it were my firm and I gave up all my morals, I would charge more than I could sell the firm for. I'm giving up basically all future revenue and tarnishing my own name; it wouldn't be something I casually did.
The How : The Hacker in Hacker News (HN) means a computer hacker and this story is about hacking.
The Why: Because a community of hackers and non hackers alike who use HN found it interesting and upvoted it enough to make it to the frontpage.
Hope that helps answering the how and why.
India has always been quite far from a perfect democracy. Do we even have proof that this targeting of dissenters and opposition activists only started with BJP/Modi?
doesn't matter because we can't change the past. what's relevant today is that technology has created opportunities for power structures to exploit and take advantage at a much bigger scale.
Planting of evidence (as this title points to) is just one of many things that are a problem when we pretend digital roots of trusts are flawless as is the case with the totally broken Aadhaar: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
The evidence was most likely planted by the investigating government agency. This adds to the several cases of crackdown against dissent, activism and criticism against the government.
India openly admits putting activists in prison on bogus charges. What a relief, a shining example of democracy in action.
Although when planting false evidence in the computer I have a bad feeling that unless the victim is some kind of VIP they might have big problems even in the traditional democratic countries.
The population of least populated state in India is Around 600k. So Luxembourg would barely be a state in India. There are more than 70 cities with bigger population than Luxembourg in India
Honestly it's not a great way to compare democaricies which are not even the size of big Indian cities to India. But yeah. You did come up with 5 democaries that seems like legit good when it comes to Human rights. I didn't investigate about the human right violations. But with population so low I won't be surprised if there are not many.
Can't deny. But to be fair I never said you can't come up with 5 countries either. Tiny nations which are even smaller than cities are always exceptions in all kind of stats. The fact that they had to come up with exceptions validates my point that India not the only democracy which does this. I am not justifying it obviously.
The comment I replied back make it sounds like India is the only democracy which does this and is not a real democracy like the other democracies.
Obviously it's stupid to put activists in jail for bogus claims. And there is no justification in doing it even though other countries are doing it. It's pretty obvious to anyone with a decent IQ.
Never said that. The comment I replied back make it sounds like India is the only democracy which does this and is not a real democracy like the other democracies.
Obviously it's stupid to put activists in jail for bogus claims. And there is no justification in doing it even though other countries are doing it. It's pretty obvious to anyone with a decent IQ.
Point is pretty much all democrasies do this and it's not only India(Not justifying). The fact that the OP had to come up with nations with population less than large Universities and tech companies as counter examples validates it.
Never said that. The comment I replied back make it sounds like India is the only democracy which does this and is not a real democracy like the other democracies.
Obviously it's stupid to put activists in jail for bogus claims. And there is no justification in doing it even though other countries are doing it. It's pretty obvious to anyone with a decent IQ.
The comment actually says the opposite, that even "traditional democratic countries" have big problems. That is to say, it's always possible to improve and all improvement is valuable. Already India, while unquestionably flawed, is regarded as more democratic than some European countries.
I agree. India has a lot to improve on. It's far from perfect. And it's very hard. 1.4 billion people. 20+ languages. So many religions. So many castes. But it still continue to work. With its flaws. But it's one of the thing that I am the most happy about this country. That democracy is still alive. Some more alive in some states than the other. We have come a long way since the British Colonization and the times before that. I think the future would be more brighter for democracy than last 50 years.
so according to you, your neighbors committing murder gives YOU the right to do the same because what ??
why are you bringing other countries into it? the question is on india here. india does this and there should be consequences regardless of what anyone else does or does not do
Never said that. The comment I replied back make it sounds like India is the only democracy which does this and is not a real democracy like the other democracies.
Obviously it's stupid to put activists in jail for bogus claims. And there is no justification in doing it even though other countries are doing it. It's pretty obvious to anyone with a decent IQ.
>"so according to you, your neighbors committing murder gives YOU the right to do the same because what ??"
Problem is when said murderers assume self-righteous position and pontificate how bad everyone else is.
If they punish the perpetrators and fix the situation than sure, full respect. But just for the fuck of it: who for example got punished in UK for deporting and otherwise ruining lives of their own citizens (Windrush scandal)? The answer is most likely zilch. Still they teach everyone else.
And yes I agree that the scale of abuse is way smaller in the countries like the US. But they compensate by abusing citizens of the other countries by dropping democratic bombs.
Not sure about NL/China but being able to read Russian freely I'd say they make more than enough stink in the media when someone gets problems for political activity. Whether the person gets a relief is of course a different question.
Your logic is impeccable. There is a lot going on that you dont know, but you know it is happening. I suppose you are doing a lot of shady stuff in your basement but we dont know it.
Notice how that none of the reports mention how the sanctity of the chain of custody of the hard disk has been preserved.
The forensics lab in Pune, which is the authorized lab for examining this kind of data, and which examined the disk when the chain of custody was preserved, found no such planted evidence when the hard disk was taken in.
Are you suggesting the consulting firm planted the planted evidence?
FTA, I gather the chain of custody goes: police seized the hard drive, made a copy, and provided the copy to the defense attorney who (correctly) engaged outside experts investigate.
State labs can (and do) make mistakes and miss evidence. State prosecutors can (and do) fail to turn over exculpatory evidence. The whole point of a trial is that we the people and the defendant don’t just have to take the state at their word. We can ship evidence off to a lab of our liking and, if the results differ from the state’s lab, ask them about it in open court.
That’s _exactly_ how the system works. The charges must be proven by the government, not merely asserted.
The defense team contended that the evidence in question was planted by the NIA to target the "activists". But even by the Arsenal report, that malware was installed some 22 months before the outbreak of violence - which means the malware, even if it did exist, was installed a lot earlier than when the investigative agency entered the picture.
Besides, the NIA has proof in the form of video evidence of the seizure and procedures followed thereafter that establishes the chain of custody of the hard drive in question. Also, the laptop's contents are not the sole evidence based on which the charges have been framed.
Are the hashes of the drives examined by Arsenal the same as that examined by Pune FSL? Were they tampered with before being provided to Arsenal? Why are these reports put out without sufficient technical details establishing chain of custody?
> But even by the Arsenal report, that malware was installed some 22 months before the outbreak of violence
No, not really. Amnesty International stated that the targeted activists were subjected to the malware email campaign between January and October 2029, whose aim was to deploy NetWire on the activists's computers.
Afterwards, once successfully deployed, said malware was used to plant evidence on the acrivists computers.
For an answer to that question please read the article. I mean, you're here dumping all sort of denialist posts but you didn't even bother to read the article that lays out all the facts and findings?
I have read the arricle, and more. OTOH, you're deliberately seeking to mislead by being vague on the "afterwards." I'm going to stop responding to your diatribe devoid of facts.
They didn’t identify it? Or they are claiming it’s not present? Those are two wildly different claims. Presumably if both labs did their documentation correctly, it should be easy to compare hashes and see whether they examined different filesystems, which would be a prerequisite for any claim that the malware was added at some point following the initial government custody chain.
Being a responsible journalist today requires a certain amount of digital savvy especially if you’re covering controversial topics. Not victim blaming or anything but stuff like this is why journalists try to use secure messaging apps (well at least those they think are secure). I wonder if this is something that should be taught in school…
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_corridor