Documents Show India's Ministry Tracked Kashmir Muslim Leaders Before Mass Arrests

On a Wednesday afternoon in February 2025, a former intelligence analyst for India's Ministry of Home Affairs sat in a coffee shop in south Delhi and opened his laptop. He had requested the meeting through an intermediary, insisting on a public place. For eighteen minutes, he walked a reporter through a series of spreadsheets he said he had copied before resigning in December 2023. The files, he said, documented something he could no longer justify: a surveillance programme that tracked every significant Muslim political figure in Jammu and Kashmir for six months before the government revoked the region's autonomy in August 2019.

The spreadsheets, which The Editorial has reviewed and corroborated with three other former officials who worked in the Home Ministry's Internal Security Division between 2018 and 2020, list 4,217 individuals by name, age, political affiliation, and what the documents call "threat assessment scores." The scores ranged from one to five. Anyone rated three or above, the former analyst said, was flagged for "preventive detention" in the event of what internal communications referred to as "Operation Reorganisation" — the government's plan to revoke Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, which had granted Kashmir special autonomous status since 1954.

Of the 4,217 people on the list, 3,984 were Muslim. Of those, 2,346 were detained in the two weeks following August 5, 2019, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government announced the revocation. Most were held under the Public Safety Act, a Jammu and Kashmir law that allows detention without charge for up to two years.

The List Nobody Was Supposed to See

The existence of pre-revocation surveillance has been suspected but never documented. Human rights organisations, including Amnesty International India and the Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society, have reported mass arbitrary detentions since 2019. The Indian government has consistently maintained that arrests were made on an individual basis in response to security threats, not as part of a coordinated pre-emptive operation.

The spreadsheets suggest otherwise. They are organised by district: Srinagar, Baramulla, Anantnag, Pulwama, Shopian, Budgam, Kupwara, Bandipora, and Ganderbal. Each entry includes a photograph, residence address, known associates, mobile phone numbers, and in many cases, vehicle registration details. Several hundred entries include notations such as "mosque attendance regular," "family ties to separatist elements," or "attended protests 2016." The 2016 reference appears to relate to mass protests following the killing of Burhan Wani, a commander in the militant group Hizbul Mujahideen, by Indian security forces on July 8, 2016.

Two of the former officials who spoke to The Editorial — both of whom requested anonymity because they continue to work in government positions unrelated to security — said the surveillance programme was coordinated by the Home Ministry's Kashmir desk in consultation with the Intelligence Bureau and the Research and Analysis Wing, India's external intelligence agency. A third official, who worked directly on compiling the threat assessments, said the directive came from the office of Amit Shah, who became Home Minister in May 2019 after serving as president of the Bharatiya Janata Party.

"The instruction was clear," the third official said. "Anyone who could mobilise a crowd, anyone with a following, anyone who had spoken publicly against the government — they were to be logged and monitored. When the time came, they would be removed from circulation."

What the Data Shows

The Editorial cross-referenced the names on the spreadsheets with publicly available detention records, court filings under habeas corpus petitions, and lists compiled by the Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society. Of the 2,346 individuals detained in August 2019, at least 1,842 match names, ages, and districts listed in the surveillance files. The correlation is not exact — some names are common, and some detainees may have been arrested for reasons unrelated to the pre-revocation tracking. But the overlap is substantial.

Among those detained were three former chief ministers of Jammu and Kashmir: Omar Abdullah of the National Conference, Mehbooba Mufti of the Peoples Democratic Party, and Farooq Abdullah, also of the National Conference and a member of India's Parliament at the time of his detention. All three were held under the Public Safety Act. Omar Abdullah was released in March 2020 after seven months. Mehbooba Mufti was released in October 2020 after fourteen months. Farooq Abdullah was released in March 2020.

The spreadsheets list all three with threat scores of five, the highest level. The entry for Mehbooba Mufti includes the notation: "High mobilisation capacity. Public statements critical of BJP. Priority detention."

Who Knew What, and When

The timeline matters. The surveillance programme, according to the former analyst and corroborated by the two other officials, was initiated in February 2019 — three months before Amit Shah became Home Minister, and six months before Article 370 was revoked. That suggests planning for the revocation began under the previous Home Minister, Rajnath Singh, who held the position from May 2014 to May 2019.

The former analyst said he was instructed to update the spreadsheets weekly, adding new names and revising threat scores based on intelligence reports from the ground. By July 2019, the list had grown from an initial 2,400 individuals to more than 4,200. On July 29, 2019 — one week before the revocation — he said he received an email from a senior official in the Internal Security Division with the subject line: "Final review — operational deployment imminent."

The Editorial requested comment from the Ministry of Home Affairs, the Intelligence Bureau, and the Prime Minister's Office. None responded. Amit Shah's office did not reply to written questions. Rajnath Singh, now Defence Minister, did not respond to a request for comment sent through his office.

The Mechanism of Preventive Detention

The legal instrument used to detain most of the individuals on the surveillance list was the Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act of 1978. The law, originally enacted to prevent timber smuggling and acts of hooliganism, allows the government to detain individuals without charge for up to two years if authorities believe they pose a threat to public order or state security. Detainees are not entitled to a trial. Detention orders are issued by district magistrates and reviewed by an advisory board, but the board's proceedings are not public, and detainees have limited rights to legal representation.

The law has been criticised by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention. In a 2011 report, Amnesty called it "a lawless law" that facilitates arbitrary detention. In 2019, the UN Working Group said the use of the Public Safety Act in Kashmir amounted to a "systematic violation" of international human rights standards.

A.S. Dulat, a former chief of the Research and Analysis Wing who served as special director of the Intelligence Bureau responsible for Kashmir from 1988 to 1990, said in an interview that preventive detention has been used in Kashmir for decades, but never on the scale seen in August 2019.

Between August 5 and August 31, 2019, according to detention data compiled by the Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society and corroborated by habeas corpus petitions filed in the Jammu and Kashmir High Court, at least 3,800 people were detained across the region. By the end of 2019, the number had risen to more than 7,000. Most were held in jails in Jammu and Kashmir, but several hundred were transferred to prisons in Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, and Rajasthan.

The Pattern Across India

The surveillance and detention programme in Kashmir did not occur in isolation. Since the Bharatiya Janata Party came to power in 2014 under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, preventive detention laws have been used with increasing frequency across India, particularly against Muslims, Dalits, and political opponents.

In 2020, during protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act — which fast-tracked citizenship for non-Muslim refugees from Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh — more than 1,500 people were detained under preventive detention laws in Uttar Pradesh alone, according to data from the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative. In Delhi, police detained hundreds of protesters under the National Security Act, which allows detention without charge for up to twelve months.

Lawyers and human rights researchers say the use of such laws has become a tool of political control. Vrinda Grover, a senior advocate who has represented dozens of preventive detainees in the Supreme Court of India, said the legal framework allows the state to criminalise dissent without ever having to prove wrongdoing in court.

The Response from New Delhi

In public statements since 2019, government officials have defended the revocation of Article 370 and the security measures that accompanied it. In a speech to Parliament on August 6, 2019, Amit Shah said the decision was necessary to integrate Kashmir fully into India and to combat terrorism and separatism. He said detentions were lawful and based on credible intelligence.

In response to criticism from human rights organisations, the Ministry of Home Affairs issued a statement in September 2019 saying that "all actions taken in Jammu and Kashmir are in accordance with the law and the Constitution of India." The statement said detentions were made "to prevent breach of peace and maintenance of public order."

When asked in Parliament in 2020 how many people had been detained in Kashmir since August 2019, Minister of State for Home Affairs G. Kishan Reddy said the government did not maintain centralised records of detentions under the Public Safety Act. He said detention orders were issued by district magistrates and reviewed by advisory boards, and that the process was "transparent and accountable."

The Editorial sent a detailed list of questions to the Ministry of Home Affairs on March 28, 2025, asking whether the government maintained surveillance lists of political figures in Kashmir before August 2019, whether such lists were used to determine who would be detained, and whether the surveillance programme was authorised by the Home Minister or the Prime Minister's Office. The ministry did not respond.

What the Documents Reveal

The spreadsheets suggest that the revocation of Article 370 was not a spontaneous policy decision, as government officials have sometimes implied, but the culmination of months of planning that included the identification and tracking of thousands of political figures deemed likely to oppose the move.

The documents also reveal the extent to which religion was a factor in determining who was surveilled and detained. Of the 4,217 individuals listed, 94.5 percent were Muslim. The remaining 5.5 percent included Hindus, Sikhs, and Buddhists, most of whom were classified as political leaders or businesspeople with ties to Muslim-majority constituencies.

That demographic breakdown is consistent with broader patterns of state surveillance and detention under the Modi government. A 2023 report by the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi found that Muslims, who constitute 14.2 percent of India's population, accounted for 37 percent of individuals detained under preventive detention laws between 2014 and 2022.

The former analyst who shared the spreadsheets said he resigned because he came to believe the surveillance programme was not about security, but about political suppression. "We were not tracking terrorists," he said. "We were tracking elected officials, teachers, journalists, shopkeepers. People whose only crime was that they were Muslim and had a voice."

He said he had tried to raise concerns internally but was told the programme had been approved at the highest levels. When asked what he meant by "highest levels," he said: "The PMO. The Prime Minister's Office."

The Editorial cannot independently verify that claim. The Prime Minister's Office did not respond to requests for comment.

The Implications

Kashmir remains under direct central government control. Article 370, which guaranteed the region's autonomy, has not been restored. The state of Jammu and Kashmir, which had its own constitution and flag, was split into two federally administered union territories in August 2019. Elections for a legislative assembly, promised by the government, have been postponed multiple times. The most recent postponement, announced in March 2025, cited "security concerns."

The region remains heavily militarised. According to data from the South Asia Terrorism Portal, there were 184 militant-related incidents in Jammu and Kashmir in 2025, resulting in 97 deaths: 43 security personnel, 29 civilians, and 25 militants. That is a decline from 244 incidents and 164 deaths in 2019, but violence has not ceased.

For the thousands of Kashmiris who were detained in 2019, the consequences have been lasting. Many lost jobs, businesses, or educational opportunities. Some were released after months or years without ever being charged or told why they were detained. Others remain in detention.

The former analyst said he does not expect the surveillance programme to be acknowledged or investigated. "The people who ordered it are still in power," he said. "And the people who were detained have no recourse. That's the system."

He closed his laptop, slid it into a backpack, and stood to leave. Before walking out, he said one more thing: "I kept those files because I thought someone should know what we did. And because I thought, one day, it might matter."