119-hres561

[Congressional Bills 119th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H. Res. 561 Introduced in House

    (IH) ]

<DOC>

119th CONGRESS
 1st Session
H. RES. 561

 Honoring the life and legacy of Father Stan, a prominent human rights 
activist who died while in custody of the Indian State on July 5, 2021, 
 and encouraging India to pursue an independent investigation into his 
 arrest, incarceration, and death.

_______________________________________________________________________

 IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

 June 27, 2025

 Mr. Vargas submitted the following resolution; which was referred to 
 the Committee on Foreign Affairs

_______________________________________________________________________

 RESOLUTION

 Honoring the life and legacy of Father Stan, a prominent human rights 
activist who died while in custody of the Indian State on July 5, 2021, 
 and encouraging India to pursue an independent investigation into his 
 arrest, incarceration, and death.

Whereas Father Stanislaus Lourduswamy, known as Father Stan, was born on April 
 26, 1937, in a village called Viragalur in the Tiruchirappalli District 
 in the southern Indian State of Tamil Nadu, and inspired by the work of 
 Jesuit priests from an early age, studied theology starting in 1957;
Whereas Father Stan spent his Jesuit regency in 1965 to 1967 at St. Xavier's 
 High School Lupungutu, Chaibasa, in West Singhbhum, now in the central 
 Indian State of Jharkhand, and there came to love and appreciate the 
 culture and values of India's Adivasi (Hindi: ``Original Inhabitants'') 
 community, as well as understood the problems they faced and 
 exploitation they endured;
Whereas, in 1971, Father Stan completed his master's degree in sociology in the 
 Philippines, where he met and was influenced by Brazilian Catholic 
 Archbishop Helder Camara's work with the poor, and was subsequently put 
 in charge of the Catholic Relief Services charity in the Jesuit 
 Jamshedpur Province, now in the Indian State of Jharkhand;
Whereas Father Stan served as the director of the Indian Social Institute, 
 India's leading Jesuit institution, in the southern Indian city of 
 Bengaluru, from 1975 to 1990, where he trained young people from 
 marginalized communities across the Indian subcontinent alongside 
 educationist Duarte Baretto;
Whereas, through ideas of social justice and liberation theology, Father Stan 
 and the Indian Social Institute trained a generation of young leaders 
 among communities including Dalits, indigenous communities

    (Adivasis) , 
 fishing communities, agrarian communities, and labor movements;
Whereas, after finishing his work with the Indian Social Institute in 1991, 
 Father Stan moved to Chaibasa, in Jharkhand, where he worked for the 
 Jharkhand Organisation for Human Rights, and worked tirelessly with the 
 Adivasi people to protect their lands and homes from unfair 
 expropriation by the State and mining corporations;
Whereas, in 2006, with the support of the Jesuit society and intellectuals and 
 activists such as Xavier Dias and Ram Dayal Munda, Father Stan set up 
 Bagaicha, a research, documentation, and Adivasi training center near 
 the city of Ranchi;
Whereas Father Stan played a key role in one of the most significant Adivasi 
 movements in contemporary India, the Pathalgadi movement, which used 
 Adivasi traditions of stone carving (for instance, for gravestones) to 
 spread information among Adivasi communities regarding rights guaranteed 
 to them under the Indian Constitution;
Whereas, during these decades in Jharkhand, Father Stan advocated for and raised 
 awareness regarding the implementation of provisions of the Indian 
 Constitution like the Panchayat (Extension to Scheduled Areas) or the 
 PESA Act, which instituted self-governance for people dwelling in 
 Adivasi lands;
Whereas Father Stan also worked on ensuring the implementation of the Forest 
 Rights Act of 2006, which recognized the rights of forest-dwelling 
 communities to forest resources;
Whereas Father Stan also worked on ensuring the implementation of the Land 
 Acquisition Act of 2013, which guaranteed the right to fair compensation 
 and transparency in acquisition, and required the assent of the 
 community via its self-governance group called the gram sabha;
Whereas, on noticing widespread arrests of Adivasi youth for peaceful protests 
 against land acquisition starting in 2014 to 2015, in 2017 Father Stan 
 formed the Persecuted Prisoners Solidarity Committee to expose the 
 illegal imprisonment of Adivasi activists, and filed a case against the 
 State of Jharkhand on behalf of at least 3,000 Adivasi youths 
 languishing in jail;
Whereas, over the course of his long career fighting for the underprivileged, 
 Father Stan authored over 70 books and booklets regarding the 
 socioeconomic and cultural circumstances of the Adivasis in Jharkhand, 
 their rights to development, and the violence perpetrated against them 
 by agents of the Indian State;
Whereas Father Stan published a 2015 Bagaicha report on 102 Adivasi, Dalit, and 
 ``backward caste'' youths illegally imprisoned titled ``Deprived Rights 
 Over Natural Resources, Impoverished Adivasis Get Prison: A Study of 
 Undertrials in Jharkhand'';
Whereas, in 2017, the State of Jharkhand charged Father Stan with ``sedition'' 
 for a Facebook post written in support of the Pathalgadi movement;
Whereas Father Stan was subsequently released following the change in government 
 in Jharkhand in 2019;
Whereas, in August 2018 and June 2019, Pune police conducted raids on Father 
 Stan's one-room home in Bagaicha in a case regarding clashes near Bhima 
 Koregaon in the western Indian State of Maharashtra, and subjected 
 Father Stan to hours of intense interrogation;
Whereas, as an octogenarian and a person suffering from Parkinson's disease, and 
 in the midst of a global pandemic, Father Stan declined to travel to 
 Mumbai from Ranchi for further interrogation, and on October 9, 2020, 
 India's National Investigation Agency placed Father Stan under arrest;
Whereas Father Stan was incarcerated in Taloja prison from October 9, 2020, 
 until May 28, 2021, which provoked a gradual deterioration in his 
 health;
Whereas, after being ill-treated in prison to the extent of being denied a 
 sipper and a straw to sip water from, and in spite of repeated attempts 
 to secure bail by Father Stan's defense team, bail was consistently 
 denied to him, even after he contracted COVID-19;
Whereas the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders Mary 
 Lawlor, along with the Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to 
 the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental 
 health and the Special Rapporteur on minority issues, stated in a letter 
 to the Government of India that the digital evidence compiled by the 
 forensic reports rendered ``the ongoing detention of the 15 accused [in 
 the Bhima Koregaon case, including Father Stan] as arbitrary and 
 unlawful'';
Whereas forensic analysts revealed that unidentified hackers fabricated evidence 
 on the computers of at least 2 activists arrested in Pune, India, in 
 2018, both of whom have languished in jail and, along with 13 others, 
 face terrorism charges;
Whereas researchers at security firm SentinelOne and nonprofits Citizen Lab and 
 Amnesty International have since linked that evidence fabrication to a 
 broader hacking operation that targeted hundreds of Indian activists;
Whereas SentinelOne's researchers revealed ties between the hackers and the 
 Indian police agency in the city of Pune that arrested multiple 
 activists based on the fabricated evidence, including Father Stan;
Whereas Arsenal Consulting (``Arsenal'') in Chelsea, Massachusetts, is a digital 
 forensics consulting company with extensive experience with both 
 criminal and civil litigation, having served as expert consultants and 
 witnesses in State, Federal, and international courts;
Whereas Arsenal computer forensics involves identifying, preserving, analyzing, 
 and reporting on electronic evidence using methods acceptable in courts 
 of law;
Whereas an Arsenal forensic report dated December 11, 2022, shows that Father 
 Stan was arrested, incarcerated, and died based on fabricated evidence;
Whereas this evidence suggests that the attacker (or hackers) responsible for 
 compromising Father Stan's computer had extensive resources and time, 
 and that the obvious primary goals were surveillance and incriminating 
 document delivery;
Whereas over 50 files were planted on Father Stan's hard drive between 2017 and 
 2019;
Whereas Arsenal analysts found detailed evidence of the hackers attempting to 
 erase evidence of their activities on the night of June 11, 2019;
Whereas Father Stan's computer was suspiciously seized the very next day, June 
 12, by the Pune police;
Whereas these forensic findings indicate that hackers had advance knowledge of 
 the raid on Father Stan conducted by the Pune police;
Whereas Arsenal has connected the same attacker to a significant malware 
 infrastructure, which we now know was deployed over the course of over 6 
 years to not only attack and compromise Father Stan's computer, but to 
 attack his codefendants in the Bhima Koregaon case and defendants in 
 other high-profile Indian cases as well;
Whereas, based on various metrics, which include the vast timespan between the 
 delivery of the first and last incriminating documents on multiple 
 defendants' computers, this is one of the most serious cases involving 
 evidence tampering that Arsenal has ever encountered;
Whereas Father Stan, while still in custody of the Indian State, passed away at 
 the age of 84 on July 5, 2021, at Holy Family Hospital, Mumbai; and
Whereas July 5, 2025, marks the 4-year anniversary of Father Stan's passing 
 away: Now, therefore, be it
 Resolved, That the House of Representatives--

    (1) encourages India to pursue an independent investigation 
 into the arrest, incarceration, and death of Father Stan, a 
 prominent human rights activist who died while in custody on 
 July 5, 2021;

    (2) makes it clear to the Indian Government and all 
 governments around the world that the mistreatment and 
 incarceration of individuals advocating for human rights cannot 
 persist;

    (3) monitors the status of, and supports, the Adivasi, 
 Dalit, and minority communities in India, as well as other 
 indigenous communities around the world;

    (4) expresses concern at the misuse of antiterror laws to 
 target human rights defenders and political opponents, and 
 applauds a recent ruling by India's top court to suspend a 
 controversial colonial-era sedition law and urges India's 
 Parliament to make the suspension permanent; and

    (5) makes it clear to the Indian Government and all 
 governments around the world that freedom of expression is a 
 fundamental human right, as written in Article 19 of the 
 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and adopted by the United 
 Nations General Assembly in 1948, that enshrines the rights and 
 freedoms of all human beings.
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