She sinks in her beige sofa with green motifs and juggles between two phones and her laptop, checking for communication from her office, her lawyers and journalists’ bodies. In Navi Mumbai, the satellite city of Mumbai, Rana Ayyub, a 41-year old journalist working with The Washington Post, is not a new face for the police.
Being a journalist for over two decades, she has done investigative reporting on Gujarat riots, written on Manipur riots, India’s Muslims, Hindu nationalism, and has received international recognition for her book Gujarat Files. She has faced online harassment for years and has been doxed by ‘Hindu nationalist handles’. In 2022, Ms. Ayyub was probed by the Enforcement Directorate in an alleged money laundering case. She was under the scrutiny of the Income Tax department as well. By her own account, several cases have been filed against her in different parts of the country ‘by the right-wing trolls’.
Over the last few years, she has filed several complaints with the police citing harassment. Though the police filed five first information reports (FIRs), there was no further action on them. The only time the police took proactive steps was after the murder of journalist-activist Gauri Lankesh, she says. The police had then offered her a licence for a revolver.
