Indian journalist assaulted during interview; phone taken, recording deleted

Rohit Sharma, a senior journalist for India Today, was physically prevented from leaving an interview he was conducting with an Indian politician in Irving, Texas, on Sept. 7, 2024, after men present intervened to stop the questioning, grabbed his cellphone and ultimately deleted the recording of the conversation, Sharma told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker.

Sharma said that he had arranged an interview with Sam Pitroda — the overseas head of the Indian National Congress, one of India’s main opposition parties — ahead of the arrival of fellow party member Rahul Gandhi, the leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha, or lower house of India’s Parliament.

Approximately 30 people, a mixture of party members from India and the United States, were in the room with them, Sharma reported for the widely circulated newsweekly. The interview with Pitroda was straightforward, he said, setting the scene ahead of Gandhi’s three-day visit and addressing issues that concern members of the Indian diaspora.

“The last question that I asked him was about (nonresident Indians) who’ve protested against the killing of minorities in Bangladesh recently, after the change of government,” Sharma said, referring to the alleged targeting of the Hindu, Christian and Buddhist populations in the Muslim-majority nation. “He was answering that question when, I think to his surprise and my surprise, one person jumped to his feet and shouted, ‘It’s controversial! Stop recording it!’”

Pitroda tried to calm the men down, Sharma said, but another individual attempted to grab Sharma’s microphone while someone else grabbed his phone off the tripod it was set up on. Shortly after, Pitroda was told Gandhi had arrived at the Dallas Fort Worth International Airport and quickly left the room along with some of those present.

The approximately 15 men who remained continued shouting at one another and at Sharma, the journalist told the Tracker, debating what needed to be done.

“I was made to sit on a chair — there were two persons, one on my left side and one on the right — and I couldn’t get up. I tried getting up and they said, ‘No, sit down, sit down. You can’t move,’” Sharma told the Tracker. “My instant fear was: I need to get out of this room.”

Sharma said that the men locked his phone while passing it around, so one of them held it up to his face to unlock it using Face ID. They deleted the recording from Sharma’s Photos app, and once again used his Face ID to access his Recently Deleted folder to permanently delete the recording. He said his phone was in airplane mode, and so the recording was not uploaded to his iCloud.

The men went through the other apps on Sharma’s phone to ensure no copy remained. Once they were sure, Sharma was allowed to stand and everyone began to leave the suite, approximately 30 minutes after halting the interview with Pitroda.

“Somebody said, ‘We should keep his phone for the next four days, until Mr. Gandhi leaves the U.S., so that nothing gets out,’” Sharma said. He added that he was able to convince them to return the phone, and once he got to the parking lot he called Pitroda to alert him to what had happened.

The incident immediately chilled his reporting, Sharma said, as he felt unsafe attending any of Gandhi’s events in Washington, D.C., and he’s concerned about what it will mean for his coverage moving forward.

“Anything I write about him moving forward will be looked at through the lens of, ‘Oh, he’s a disgruntled person.’ Even if I report objectively, people will not think it objective,” he said. “It has left a scar.”

The National Press Club, of which Sharma is a member, said in a statement that the men “had no right or standing to take Sharma’s phone from him or delete content,” adding that journalists working in the U.S. are protected by the First Amendment, regardless of their nationality.

Sharma said that Pitroda called him to apologize for the incident a few days after and told the journalist that he believes in press freedom and that he would investigate and hold the responsible parties accountable.

When reached for comment, Pitroda shared a response to the NPC’s statement in which he denied the incident took place, adding that he did not apologize to Sharma because “the incident never happened.”

Sharma said that while he had been concerned about his physical safety during the incident, he’s more concerned now that the story has been picked up by politicians in India. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi condemned the attack, saying, “Those who claim to be champions of freedom of speech indulged in brutality.”

“I’m scared because this is a very powerful family: Mr. Gandhi and his family are very powerful, they’ve ruled India for more than 60 years. And now that this has created such a big political fervor in India — even the prime minister talked about it — I don’t want to be in the middle of this mess, between both the parties,” he said. “I still am scared for my extended family in India. And I’m also supposed to travel to India the last week of September into October and I’m debating whether I should even go.”

He added that he went public with what happened not in spite of his fear but because of it.

“I’m speaking up for two reasons: First is I think nobody should get away with this, in the sense that I don’t want them to feel emboldened to come back to the U.S. and do such things with another journalist,” Sharma said. “Second is my fear for my own safety. They know who I am, my face has been flashed all over the media in India. If it’s on the record, then maybe people will be fearful of doing such acts again.”

Editor’s Note: This article was updated to include comment from Sam Pitroda.