A US journalist has taken the Indian government to court after his Indian overseas citizenship was unilaterally cancelled, after the publication of a story critical of a prominent Indian businessman, The Guardian reports.

Raphael Satter, who covers cybersecurity for the Reuters news agency in the US, received a letter from India’s ministry of home affairs in early December 2023, accusing him of producing work that “maliciously” tarnished India’s reputation and informing him that his Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) card had been cancelled.

OCI status is given to foreign citizens of Indian origin, or those married to Indian nationals, and allows for visa-free travel, residency and employment in India. Satter received his OCI through marriage. The cancellation of his OCI status means he is no longer able to travel to India, where members of his family live.

In recent years, the ruling Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) government, led by the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, has been accused of revoking OCI privileges for those it has deemed critical, part of what Human Rights Watch has called a campaign of “politically motivated repression”.

Journalists, academics and activists have been a particular target. Several high-profile journalists have been forced to leave the country after their OCI cards were revoked and academics have been turned away at the Indian border.

According to the letter sent to Satter in December 2023, his OCI status was revoked for his alleged “practising [of] journalism without proper permission” and for work that had been “maliciously creating adverse and biased opinion against Indian institutions in the international arena”.

Satter, who works in Washington DC, denies ever conducting journalism in India and has only travelled to the country to visit family.

The Indian government provided no specifics to Satter’s lawyers on how his journalistic work had been deemed a national security threat to India. However, Satter’s lawyers noted that the cancellation of his OCI came at exactly the same time that a defamation case had been filed against him in India for a story he had written on the Indian cybersecurity company Appin and its co-founder Rajat Khare.

Satter’s investigation for Reuters, titled “How an Indian startup hacked the world”, exposed the workings of Appin, alleging it had become “a hack-for-hire powerhouse that stole secrets from executives, politicians, military officials and wealthy elites around the globe”.

Rajat Khare’s US representative, the lawfirm Clare Locke, rejected any association between its client and the cyber-mercenary business, telling Reuters that Khare “has never operated or supported, and certainly did not create, any illegal ‘hack for hire’ industry in India or anywhere else”.

During the course of his inquiries into Appin and Khare, Satter said that he had received a series of threats made by individuals associated with the company, “one of whom alluded to potential ‘diplomatic action’ unless I abandoned my reporting”.

“The petitioner and his employer, Reuters, began receiving threats from individuals linked to a company called Appin, which has hacked organisations in India and abroad,” Satter’s court petition says.

On the same day that Satter received the notice of the OCI cancellation, a Delhi judge granted an injunction against the story, forcing it to be temporarily taken down. It was restored 10 months later. Karuna Nundy, the lawyer representing Satter, said the timing clearly “linked” the two events. She emphasised that, under Indian law, defamation is not grounds for OCI cancellation.

Khare has been active in pursuing news organisations that have published articles on the activities of Appin. According to an investigation by Reporters Without Borders, at least 15 media outlets investigating Appin received legal notices and five have been subjected to legal proceedings.

The New Yorker and the Sunday Times are among those who have faced legal action by entities representing Khare, who also has initiated legal proceedings in Switzerland against a story that mentioned his name. Reporters Without Borders described the magnitude of these gag lawsuits as “unprecedented”.

The first court hearing for Satter’s case was heard in Delhi this week. In a statement sent to the Guardian, Satter said the Indian government’s decision to cancel his OCI had “effectively cut me off from members of my family and a country I hold in great affection and respect”.

Satter was insistent that the decision was a “mistake or on a misunderstanding” by the ministry of home affairs and that he had only decided to go to court after not receiving any response to his appeal to the government for more than a year.

“I am confident that, once the integrity of my journalism is demonstrated before the Indian courts and the true and correct facts are brought to the fore, the ministry of home affairs will see fit to restore my OCI card,” he said. The ministry of home affairs did not respond to requests for comment about Satter’s case.

The Indian government now has until the next hearing, on 22 May, to respond to the petition and give legal justification for Satter’s OCI cancellation.

The Modi government has cancelled more than 100 OCI cards while in power for the last decade. Among them was the journalist Aatish Taseer, after he wrote a cover article for Time magazine criticising the prime minister.

“The Indian authorities should not be attempting to silence critics by revoking residency rights or other means,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, the deputy director of the Asia division of Human Rights Watch. “Instead, the authorities should have the maturity to accept legitimate criticism and work on reforms.”