Hindu right-wing media house OpIndia has repeatedly attacked the independent press and plays a central role in the widespread trend of discrediting reliable news media in India, according to international non-profit and non-governmental organisation Reporters Without Borders (RSF).
Based in Paris, RSF, which focuses on safeguarding the right to freedom of information, stated in a report that between 2023 and 2025, more than 300 publications targeting journalists were published on OpIndia’s website, often fuelling large-scale online harassment campaigns.
“Reporters Without Borders (RSF) demands that the Indian public prosecutor open an investigation into the cyber harassment of journalists linked to these publications. The NGO also calls for better regulation of online information platforms and an end to OpIndia’s advertising funding via Google AdSense,” it mentioned in a statement.
According to the report, OpIndia, founded in 2014 and closely aligned with the supremacist Hindu nationalist ideology Hindutva, published at least 314 articles specifically targeting journalists over the last two years.
The journalists most frequently targeted, according to the report, were Rajdeep Sardesai, consultant editor and anchor of India Today (36 articles); Arfa Khanum Sherwani, journalist at The Wire (18); Mohammed Zubair, co-founder of the fact-checking website Alt News (15); Mahesh Langa, journalist at The Hindu (13); Ravish Kumar, independent journalist (11); Rana Ayyub, columnist at The Washington Post, and Prabir Purkayastha, chief editor of Newsclick (10 each).
Foreign journalists were also targeted, including Hannah Ellis-Petersen, correspondent for The Guardian, and Avani Dias, journalist with ABC News.
“OpIndia is a central cog in the systematic harassment of journalists in India, which puts them in very real danger. RSF calls on the Indian justice system to investigate the cyberharassment campaigns linked to these publications. Online platforms, particularly X, must act to remove the hateful content fuelling these attacks. What’s more, it seems that Google AdSense’s continued funding of this site is incompatible with its misconduct. The fight against online harassment is key in protecting journalists and press freedom in India,” Anne Bocandé, RSF Editorial Director, said in a statement.
By examining the content published during this period targeting five journalists in particular — Arfa Khanum Sherwani, Mohammed Zubair, Rajdeep Sardesai, Ravish Kumar and Rana Ayyub — RSF found that 32 of the 43 articles analysed were followed by a wave of cyberharassment against these media professionals. These attacks involved about a dozen accounts that regularly shared OpIndia content, five of which are followed by the site’s administrators.
“In some cases, OpIndia’s hostile content coincided with coordinated harassment operations via Telegram groups linked to the Hindu supremacist movement. RSF identified a public group of around 30,000 members explicitly calling for the harassment of journalists, as well as three other public groups that regularly share hostile posts during these campaigns,” the report stated.
The report also analysed how waves of trolling and cyber attacks increased massively after OpIndia published articles targeting journalists.
As an example, it cited how in June 2025, the co-founder of the fact-checking site Alt News, Mohammed Zubair, was targeted by an online publication accusing him of “Hinduphobia” after he highlighted an old tweet in which he shared a cartoon of Amit Shah, India’s current Minister of Home Affairs and a leading figure of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the ruling party.
“Between 20 and 21 June, OpIndia’s X account reshared the publication targeting Mohammed Zubair three times. Each repost triggered a new wave of coordinated attacks. While around 762 posts were published in the 24 hours preceding the publication of OpIndia’s content, this figure rose to 3,300 in the 24 hours that followed,” the report stated.
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