India shreds US religious freedom body over demand to sanction R&AW, calls report ‘biased’

NEW DELHI: In a strongly-worded rebuttal, India on Wednesday said that it is the US religious freedom body USCIRF that should be designated internationally as an “entity of concern” for its repeated “pattern of biased and politically motivated assessments” and “misrepresentation” of facts.

India’s statement came hours after the US body’s annual religious freedom report claimed that minorities in India continue to face deteriorating treatment.

The panel’s report also called for imposing sanctions on India’s external intelligence agency Research &Analysis Wing (R&AW) over its alleged involvement in the “assassination” plots against ‘Khalistani’ separatists and extremists overseas.

“We have seen the recently released 2025 Annual Report of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), which once again continues its pattern of issuing biased and politically motivated assessments,” the Ministry of External Affairs said, raising concerns on the authenticity of the body over such “agenda-based” claims.

“The USCIRF’s persistent attempts to misrepresent isolated incidents and cast aspersions on India’s vibrant multicultural society reflect a deliberate agenda rather than a genuine concern for religious freedom,” the MEA said while trashing the report.

Saying that the US religious freedom body is far from reality, New Delhi said it does not even expect the panel to engage with the truth. “India is home to 1.4 billion people who are adherents to all religions known to mankind. However, we have no expectation that the USCIRF will engage with the reality of India’s pluralistic framework or acknowledge the harmonious coexistence of its diverse communities,” the MEA pointed out.

In its reaction, New Delhi described the report as “biased and politically motivated” and said the efforts to “undermine” India’s standing as a beacon of democracy and tolerance will not succeed, adding the USCIRF should be designated as an “entity of concern”.

In its 2025 annual report, the USCIRF alleged that religious freedom conditions in India continued to deteriorate as attacks and discrimination against religious minorities continued to rise.

The USCIRF recommended to the US government to impose “targeted sanctions on individuals and entities, such as Vikash Yadav and RAW, for their culpability in severe violations of religious freedom by freezing their assets and/or barring their entry into the United States”.

The US has charged Yadav, a former Indian government official, in the alleged foiled plot to kill Khalistani separatist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun on American soil in 2023.

In its recommendation, the USCIRF also called for designating India as a “country of particular concern” or CPC for engaging in and “tolerating systematic, ongoing, and egregious religious freedom violations, as defined by the International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA)”.

The MEA spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal, while responding to media queries on the USCIRF report, said that it once again continued its pattern of issuing “biased and politically motivated assessments.”

In the report, the American entity also recommended to the US government to conduct a “review assessing whether arms sales to India, such as MQ-9B drones under Section 36 of the Arms Export Control Act, may contribute to or exacerbate religious freedom violations”.

Authorities in India continued to exploit anti-terror and financing laws, including the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) and the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) to crack down on civil society organisations and detain members of religious minorities, human rights defenders, and journalists reporting on religious freedom, it claimed.

The USCIRF is an independent, bipartisan US federal government agency. It makes policy recommendations to the US President, Secretary of State, and Congress and tracks the implementation of these recommendations.with agency inputs