New Delhi: New outlets around the world investigating an ‘ethical hacking’ company cofounded by Indian investor Rajat Khare have been systematically threatened with legal action, an investigation by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has revealed.
Since 2022, at least 15 media outlets, across the US, UK, France, India and Switzerland, have modified or retracted their reports a result of the notices and legal charges pressed by Khare or the Association of Appin Training Centers (AOATC), an obscure entity that claims to defend the Appin brand’s interests and reputation.
“The magnitude of these gag lawsuits – known as strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPPs) – is unprecedented,” RSF said.
“If it becomes known that a powerful person can use the Indian court to strike down articles all over the world, everybody will do it. So it’s a big deal […] and if they succeed, they’ll do that everywhere,” a source familiar with Khare’s tactics was quoted as saying in the report.
According to RSF, Reuters seems to be at the top of AOATC’s hit list. The British news agency had to wait 10 months for a New Delhi district court to reverse, on appeal, a prior decision ordering it to take down an investigation titled “How an Indian start-up hacked the world”
Other media outlets that received legal threats over their reportage on Khare or Apin include the New Yorker, Wired, Intelligence Lab, Sunday Times, NDTV, The Wire, Times of India, Swiss television channel Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen and Gotham City among others.
Unlike most media outlets targeted by Khare or AOATC, the New Yorker story is still available online. “The New Yorker fully stands behind the piece, which is an accurate and fair account on a matter of legitimate public interest. We will continue to defend the right to publish important reporting without fear or favour,” a spokesperson for the magazine told RSF.
However, the 10-month-long suspension of the Reuters article, which was based on hundreds of interviews and thousands of authenticated and verified documents, served its purpose of having a chilling effect on investigative journalists
Several journalists who investigated Appin told RSF that the incident sent a very negative signal to investigative reporters — to the point where journalists preferred to either take down or heavily modify their coverage of the Reuters story.
Preempting retaliation from AOATC, Swiss media outlet Gotham City decided not to publish Khare’s name in their report. Instead, they referred to him as X.X.
This did not prevent Khare’s lawyers from ordering Gotham City to modify its reporting. “The content and tone of your article are deliberately sensationalist and include many factual and erroneous confusions and shortcuts,” wrote Sandrine Giroud, one of Khare’s Swiss lawyers, in a letter seen by RSF.
Curiously, these lawsuits or letters are usually sent by AOATC, an opaque entity that has not been named in the original investigations. The AOATC seems to systematically contact and sue media outlets that discuss Appin and Khare, even though the organisation presents itself as an “autonomous body” that supports and manages training centres operating under the Appin franchise.
The organisation’s legitimacy was called into question even by Indian courts. The court pointed out that since AOATC was only created in 2022, it would therefore not be concerned by the claims made in the Reuters article, which reported on events that took place several years prior to its inception.
AOATC has maintained that Khare “has no links with this association.”
