Man mentioned in toolkit linked with ISI, claim cops
Say Pieter Friedrich was associated with Bhajan Singh Bhinder, alias Iqbal Chaudhary, advocate of Kashmir-Khalistan desk of Pak agency
NEW DELHI: The Delhi Police on Monday said they were probing how the name of Pieter Friedrich, who they claimed was associated with a module of the Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), figured in the toolkit that was tweeted by Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg and is now being probed in connection with the violence during the January 26 farmers’ tractor rally.
The police said the document aimed to spread misinformation, tarnish India’s image, and incite unrest.
At a press briefing on Monday, police told reporters that the document that was tweeted and later withdrawn by Thunberg mentioned the name of Friedrich, who has been on the radar of the security agencies since late 2006 when he was associated with one Bhajan Singh Bhinder alias Iqbal Chaudhary, a leading proponent of the K2 (Kashmir-Khalistan) desk of ISI.
Thunberg later posted an updated document.
On Monday, an account that ostensibly belonged to Friedrich, tweeted: “‘Delhi Police on Monday unearthed the role of proPakistan and Khalistan sympathiser Pieter Friedrich.’ For the record, not only do I not support Khalistan, but the Khalistan movement today appears to nothing more than a psy-ops project of the Modi regime.”
On Saturday, Delhi Police’s cyber crime unit arrested 22-year-old climate activist Disha Rai from her home in Bengaluru for allegedly working on the toolkit related to the farmers’ protest, and brought her to Delhi.
Top opposition leaders protested Ravi’s arrest, with some leaders directly accusing the Union government for muzzling dissent. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi quoted Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s famous couplet, “Bol ke lab azad hain tere...” to say that “Tell them that the truth is alive till now. They (the government) are scared, not the country. India won’t be silenced.”
Activists from various organisations said creating a toolkit was standard operating procedure for advocacy and media outreach, and did not constitute a crime as it was entirely up to people whether or not to follow what toolkits suggested.
“If you see the toolkit, it is a very carefully crafted document. It has sections on what hashtags to trend on a particular day, what action has to be taken, who is to be tagged, and who is to be followed. In the section - ‘ who is to be followed’ - there are certain names of established media houses, reputed fact-checkers, some NGOs and among those you’ll find one very incongruous looking name – Peter Friedrich,” DCP Manishi Chandra of the special cell claimed.
“Bhinder’s name was also associated with arms and drugs smuggling,” he said, adding that they will investigate why Friedrich’s name was mentioned in the toolkit in the list of people who should be followed online.
The police said that they were also probing if Disha Ravi and others contacted Friedrich through Mo Dhaliwal, the founder of Poetic Justice Foundation.
Deputy commissioner of police (cyber cell) Anyesh Roy said the toolkit is not a static document but a dynamic one. “It has a large number of hyperlinks. They are links to various Google drives, Google docs and websites. One of the important websites is askindiawhy.com.
This website has a lot of proKhalistan content,” Roy said.
He said the document in itself has an action plan. “The toolkit was a private document to be shared among a limited number of people who would then influence public opinion. Having global icons to follow it, was to propagate it further. False narrative and pro-Khalistani propaganda was also to be propagated through this.”
Activists condemned the action. “A toolkit is the most ordinary and commonplace of resources...we believe Disha Ravi and youngsters like her ought to be celebrated, not harassed and demonised,” said environmental activist G Sundarajan in Chennai.