By Matters India Reporter
New Delhi, Nov 15, 2022: Catholic Church leaders have sought an “unconditional apology” from the Indian government for the custodial death of Father Stan Swamy after a US based digital forensic firm has found that the late Jesuit was falsely implicated in a sedition case.

“At least at this stage, the government and its probe agency should tender an unconditional apology to people for the unjust arrest, inhuman incarceration and custodial death of Father Swamy for no fault of his,” says Jesuit Father A Santhanam, convener of the National Lawyers Forum of Religious and Priests (NLFRP).

Earlier, the Arsenal Consulting, a digital forensic laboratory based in the United States, had found that Father Swamy was framed after hacking into his computer hard drive and planting incriminating documents as evidences to implicate him.

The agency its recent report said, “Digital evidence used to arrest senior human rights defender Father Swamy in the Bhima-Koregaon case was planted on his computer’s hard drive.”

The firm came out with the report after analyzing his computers.

Father Santhanam says the government should tell the nation who were behind the hacking and at whose instruction an innocent priest was implicated who had toiled hard for the rights of oppressed indigenous people.

“Yes, the government and its probe agency should take full responsibility for the judicial death of Father Swamy who was even denied proper medical care until his condition deteriorated beyond repair in the jail,” Father Santhanam, a practicing lawyer in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, told Matters India on December 15.

Father Swamy died July 5, 2021, as an under trail prisoner while undergoing treatment Holy Family Hospital in the western Indian city of Mumbai.

The elderly priest was admitted to the private hospital following an order from the Bombay High Court after his condition deteriorated in the prison and his effort to get bail for treatment failed.

Father Swamy who suffered from Parkinson’s disease, hearing impairment and other age-related diseases was struck down with Covid-19 before being shifted to private hospital.

The Arsenal Consulting report follows previous reports that documented digital evidence planting on the devices of co-defendants Rona Wilson and Surendra Gadling. Forensic analysis has shown that the hackers who attacked Father Swamy’s computer are the same as those who attacked Wilson and Gadling.

Disclosing it to the media, Jesuit Father Joseph Xavier in a statement on December 13 said, “Multiple findings link the Indian state to this hacking of human rights defenders.”

“Cybersecurity firm Sentinel One has previously investigated this attacker and concluded that their activity aligns sharply with Indian state interests,”he said in the statement.

“The attacker responsible for compromising Fr. Swamy’s computer had extensive resources (including time) and it is obvious that their primary goals were surveillance and incriminating document delivery. Arsenal has effectively caught the attacker red handed (yet again), based on remnants of their activity left behind in file system transactions, application execution data, and otherwise,” Father Xavier said quoting the finding of Arsenal Consulting.

“In June 2022, WIRED magazine reported that SentinelOne had found evidence linking the Pune police to the hackers. Forensic findings also indicate that hackers had advance knowledge of the raid on Father Stan conducted by the Pune police. The report provides detailed evidence of hackers attempting to erase evidence of their activities on the night of June 11, 2019. The Pune police seized Father Stan’s computer the very next day, on June 12,” added his statement.

“Hackers first attacked Father Stan’s computer on October 19, 2014, using a Remote Access Trojan (RAT) called Netwire. RATs allow an attacker to both remotely surveil someone’s computer, and to transfer files from and to the computer,” he explained.

“In Father Stan’s case, every single thing he typed was recorded using a process called “keylogging.” The report shows examples of the hackers being able to read his passwords as he was typing them, as well as other documents and emails. The hacker also surveilled as many as 24,000 files on Father Stan’s device,” said Father Xavier, a colleague of Father Swamy.

“In addition to surveillance, digital files were planted on Father Stan’s hard drive across two hacking campaigns starting in July 2017 and continuing till June 2019,” he added.

“Over 50 files were created on Father Stan’s hard drive, including incriminating documents that fabricated links between Father Stan and the Maoist insurgency,” Father Xavier noted.

“The final incriminating document was planted on Father Stan’s computer on June 5, 2019, a week before the raid on Father Stan. It was on the basis of these documents that Father Stan was first arrested in the Bhima Koregaon case, in spite of experts raising serious doubts about the authenticity of the documents,” he said.

Sleuths of the National Investigation Agency (NIA), a premier federal probe agency dealing with case of terrorism, arrested 84-year-old Father Swamy from his residence in Ranchi, capital of Jharkhand state in eastern India, on Oct.8.

He was accused of having links with outlawed Maoist rebels and being part of a conspiracy in the January 1, 2018, violence at Bhima Koregaon, in Maharashtra in which one person died and many others sustained injuries.

Arsenal Consulting’s President, Mark Spencer, said, “The scale of what happened to Fr. Swamy and some of his co-defendants, in terms of the aggressive surveillance of their electronic devices which culminated in incriminating document deliveries over the course of years, is truly unprecedented.”

Father Swamy’s death in custody was roundly condemned worldwide, including in the British Parliament, by the US State Department, and the UN. The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions agreed that Father Swamy’s death in custody “will forever remain a stain on the human rights record of India.”

In July 2022, a resolution honoring Father Stan’s life and work was introduced in the US Congress as well.

Father Swamy is among 16 people framed as accused in the Bhima-Koregaon case.

Father Xavier also asserted, “the Jesuits of India will continue to stand in solidarity with those who are languishing in various jails for defending the rights of the poor, especially those falsely implicated in Bhima-Khoregaon case and reaffirm our commitment to the poor and the marginalized and walk with them in their quest for dignity, liberty, and freedom.”

Meanwhile, the Indian Catholic Press Association has termed the custodial death of Father Swamy as a “state sponsored murder.”

The national body of Catholic journalists’ statement on December 15 said, “We salute the path-breaking analysis conducted by Arsenal Consulting, which has vindicated Fr Swamy, who was maligned and tortured by the state, and has jumped onto the totalitarian bandwagon.”

“The skeletons that are stumbling out of the closet should embolden all those who stand for justice and democracy to oppose state-sponsored fascism tooth and nail,” says the statement issued by ICPA president Ignatius Gonsalves.

“We strongly condemn the false allegations foisted on a pious apostle of social justice and his slow martyrdom, confined to a hospital bed and denied even a straw to sip water,” the ICPA statement said.

“We demand that the NIA, which hoisted false allegations against a saintly priest, to apologise and those involved in framing him be brought to book.”

“We also demand that Fr Stan Swamy be declared innocent by the court that initiated trial against him,” the statement urged.

Divine Word Father Babu Joseph, former spokesperson of the Catholic Bishops Conference of India, says the latest exposure by the US firm on Father Swamy arrest and custodial death is alarming and a wake-up call to the citizens to be alert against the possible machinations of some agencies within and outside the country.