Since October 10, social media in India and abroad has been abuzz with the reports published by left-leaning propaganda website The Wire claiming Meta provides “superpowers” to Bharatiya Janata Party’s office on its platforms to set narrative.
Though the reports linked to this particular case have been suspended pending an internal inquiry by The Wire, questions have been raised over the story’s contributors. One of the main tech contributors to Meta Vs The Wire reports was Devesh Kumar. There is a possibility that analyst with dubious research website Logically.ai Ayushman Kaul also provided support for the report, as one of the videos where The Wire allegedly verified DKIM signatures and internal URLs Kaul provided voiceover.
Notably, Ayushman Kaul and Devesh Kumar were authors of the series of reports on the application ‘Tek Fog’ that were released earlier this year by The Wire. In those reports, The Wire claimed that BJP was using a “not for public” application named ‘Tek Fog’ to manipulate social media platforms in their favour. The allegations are yet to be proven true. However, The Wire has now withdrawn all the stories in Meta controversy as well as Tek Fog absurdity.
Ayushman’s father and conflicts of interest
Hailing from Kashmir, Ayushman Kaul is the son of National Conference leader and spokesperson Dr Sameer Kaul, an oncologist by profession. Dr Kaul was previously with Muftis’ Peoples Democratic Party but had resigned in 2015 after PDP allied with the BJP in Jammu and Kashmir to form a government. He has been very vocally anti-BJP. In 2017, he joined National Conference.
Following his resignation, he blamed PDP for going against the mandate in the valley. He said, “The party (PDP) has compromised on the very principles it was created. The primary being alliance with the BJP after fighting elections on an anti-BJP agenda.” Kaul, who saw PDP as an “honest party” when he joined it in 2011, said PDP failed to give representation to minorities, including Sikhs and Kashmiri Hindus, something that the party had promised.
Despite being a Kashmiri Pandit himself, Kaul has been a strong critic of the revocation of Article 370 from the Kashmir valley that removed riders attached to it as being part of India. A stand that he might have taken because of his political ideology.
For instance, when Article 370 was revoked in August 2019 by Home Minister Amit Shah, he told The Quint that he believed the central government committed ‘treachery.’ He said, “I don’t feel good about it. And I believe that the rural Kashmiri Pandit will now face multiplied acrimony from the local Kashmiri Muslims who is the majority. Their whole future, whether it was in the camps or wherever else they are in the country or abroad, depended completely on future where they go and live with Kashmiri Muslims. That, unfortunately, has been dealt a complete death blow.”
Speaking to The Wire, he had said, “Pandits feel that Kashmiri Muslims have not been fair towards them, collaborated with mobs and succumbed to mass hysteria at that time. That is not completely true. There was mass hysteria and some Muslims did join the mobs, but not all Muslims. The hysteria was also engineered very meticulously. There were many Muslims who didn’t like what was happening but they were also scared and could not rise to the occasion.”
He added, “With the reading down of Article 370, Pandits are questioning the Centre’s move. Pandits still stand where they are, nothing has been done to empower them.”
In a discussion at India Today during a debate session hosted by Journalist and Author Shiv Aroor, Kaul defended NC chief Farooq Abdula’s statement where he had said that he hoped with the help of China, Article 370 would be restored. In his remarks, Kaul refused to accept Abdulah said anything wrong. Kaul pointed out that PM Modi had spent quality time with China’s President when he visited India, to which Aroor said he was trying to dilute what Abdulah said. Kaun repeatedly said he did not find anything wrong in Abdullah’s statement.
It is pertinent to note that Sameer Kaul was the personal physician of the separatist Hurriyat leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani. He had operated on him when Geelani was diagnosed with cancer in 2010. Speaking to Rediff, Kaul profusely praised Geelani and called him an “uncorrupted” politician.
He said though the political ideology was different and he did not agree with the “Kashmir Banega Pakistan” slogans often raised by Geelani, he appreciated his zeal as he did not step back from his stand even after 20 years since he remembered hearing about Geelani from his father. Nowadays, we talk about media houses painting a “good picture” of terrorists too often. What Rediff was told by Dr Kaul about Geelani was no less than a whitewash of the crimes committed by Geelani.
In multiple reports on Tek Fog, that now been suspended by The Wire, the portal failed to mention that one of the authors, who worked on the Tek Fog investigation, has a direct link to a political party from Jammu and Kashmir.
As per his LinkedIN profile, Ayushman Kaul joined London based Logically.ai as a senior analyst. Logically is a dubious website that has been pushing an anti-India narrative. Kaul has contributed to multiple stories on The Wire such as “What the SOS Tweets Tell us About the Second Wave of COVID-19”, “Tek Fog: An App With BJP Footprints for Cyber Troops to Automate Hate, Manipulate Trends”, and “Anonymous Complainant Targeting Zubair Tweet Linked to Tek Fog App, BJYM Leader in Gujarat”.
He joined the company in January 2022. It is unclear if he joined Logically after the Tek Fog exposes which were reported in first week of January or after. In Meta story, Devesh Kumar, one of the co-authors in Meta saga revealed that Kaul gave voice to the DKIM verification video they published in one of the reports.
The report as well as the video shared by The Wire on its Twitter handle have now been removed. Devesh, however, has deleted the tweet now, like many other tweets he has deleted.
It is unclear how much Kaul individually or as part of Logically was involved in the reports linked to ‘Meta Vs The Wire’ with technical aspects of the investigation.
The link between Logically and Congress
In May 2022, OpIndia explained how Logically was involved in sponsoring an anti-India stunt event where Rahul Gandhi was one of the guest speakers. The company was one of the sponsors of the event. Gandhi’s session was on May 21, which was reported by us. Rahul Gandhi spoke at the event ‘Ideas of India’ in the United Kingdom, organized by Bridge India. Resorting to his usual scaremongering, Rahul Gandhi asserted that a civil war in India would not surprise him because the country was extremely unstable. He stated that India was in a horrible position and that a political revolution was required.
To substantiate his contention, he stated that the Bharatiya Janata Party has “poured kerosene around the country” and that a single spark is enough to blow the country up.
“We have a massive level of polarization, huge unemployment. We have the backbone of employment broken, and we have a massive concentration of wealth. We are going to have social problems, and they’re coming. There’s no doubt about it,” he further said.
He even supported the US interfering in internal matters of the country. Gandhi was then asked about the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaking about human rights violations in India in a press conference. To that, Rahul replied, “I’m glad that the United States has woken up to this idea.” Tweaking the course of his answer, he said that the US is not needed in order to make us realize the issue. “It has been quite a long time since to sense it,” he stated.
Tek Fog, the ‘app’, which Logically employee worked on and published by The Wire, was used by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi to attack the BJP.
Meet Logically, the company where Ayushman Kaul works
Founded by Lyric Jain, Logically is a British Multinational technology startup company that claims to combine AI and expert analysts to “tackle harmful and manipulative content at speed and scale.” The company was founded in 2017. The headquarters are based out of Brighouse, England, and offices are spread across London, Mysuru, Bengaluru, and Virginia.
The problematic portfolio of Logically
Logically also provides ‘doxxing’ services to ‘uncover’ the identity of anonymous accounts and proudly gloats about it in the description of one of its case studies.
More worryingly, @Lyric_Jain offers a doxxing service. For those who are willing to pay and are perhaps politically aligned, the service is designed to reveal the identities of anonymous handles. Claiming Covid is a bioweapon is apparently enough to invite an “investigation.” pic.twitter.com/cU3Phnx7gY
— Surya Kanegaonkar (@suryakane) May 11, 2022
Logically India has been accused of running a disinformation campaign against Union Ministries. The account follows the usual regime change agents, including Mohammad Zubair of Alt News, Rana Ayyub of Washington Post (Amazon, which owns Washington Post, also funds Logically), News Laundry, Arfa Khanum Sherwani, Barkha Dutt, and The Quint, and many others.
Normalizing Bengal post-election violence
In May 2021, they published a report titled ‘Stop The Steal, West Bengal Style: Disinfo Narratives Around Political Violence’ in which they tried to blame the BJP for misinformation after its workers experienced waves of violence post-poll.
While asserting that post-poll violence is common in Bengal, Logically said, “As swathes of fake images and videos of the violence gained traction on social media, hashtags such as #PresidentsRuleInBengal, #BengalBurning and #ArrestMamataBanerjee trended on Twitter. The flood of misinformation and disinformation amplified by pro-BJP handles appears carefully crafted and coordinated to portray the state’s grip on law and order as lacking, hence justifying the invocation of the President’s rule in the state.” They clearly blamed BJP leaders for the misinformation.
