IV 
118TH CONGRESS 
2D SESSION 
H. RES. 1339 
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 
JULY 5, 2024 
Mr. VARGAS (for himself, Mr. MCGOVERN, and Mr. CARSON) 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 start-
ing 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 
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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 prob-
lems 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 in-
fluenced by Brazilian Catholic Archbishop He´lder 
Caˆmara’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 So-
cial Institute, India’s leading Jesuit institution, in the 
southern Indian city of Bengaluru, from 1975 to 1990, 
where he trained young people from marginalized com-
munities across the Indian subcontinent alongside educa-
tionist Duarte Baretto; 
Whereas, through ideas of social justice and liberation the-
ology, Father Stan and the Indian Social Institute 
trained a generation of young leaders among communities 
including Dalits, indigenous communities (Adivasis), fish-
ing communities, agrarian communities, and labor move-
ments; 
Whereas, after finishing his work with the Indian Social In-
stitute 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 cor-
porations; 
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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 in-
formation 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 imple-
mentation 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 implemen-
tation of the Forest Rights Act of 2006, which recognized 
the rights of forest-dwelling communities to forest re-
sources; 
Whereas Father Stan also worked on ensuring the implemen-
tation of the Land Acquisition Act of 2013, which guar-
anteed 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 Per-
secuted Prisoners Solidarity Committee to expose the ille-
gal imprisonment of Adivasi activists, and filed a case 
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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 cir-
cumstances 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 Re-
sources, 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 sup-
port 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 con-
ducted 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 interroga-
tion; 
Whereas, as an octogenarian and a person suffering from 
Parkinson’s disease, and in the midst of a global pan-
demic, Father Stan declined to travel to Mumbai from 
Ranchi for further interrogation, and on October 9, 
2020, India’s National Investigation Agency placed Fa-
ther Stan under arrest; 
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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 activ-
ists arrested in Pune, India, in 2018, both of whom have 
languished in jail and, along with 13 others, face ter-
rorism charges; 
Whereas researchers at security firm SentinelOne and non-
profits Citizen Lab and Amnesty International have since 
linked that evidence fabrication to a broader hacking op-
eration 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; 
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Whereas Arsenal Consulting (‘‘Arsenal’’) in Chelsea, Massa-
chusetts, is a digital forensics consulting company with 
extensive experience with both criminal and civil litiga-
tion, having served as expert consultants and witnesses in 
State, Federal, and international courts; 
Whereas Arsenal computer forensics involves identifying, pre-
serving, 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 docu-
ment 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 ad-
vance knowledge of the raid on Father Stan conducted by 
the Pune police; 
Whereas Arsenal has connected the same attacker to a sig-
nificant malware infrastructure, which we now know was 
deployed over the course of over 6 years to not only at-
tack and compromise Father Stan’s computer, but to at-
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tack 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 in-
criminating documents on multiple defendants’ com-
puters, this is one of the most serious cases involving evi-
dence 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, 2023, marks the 2-year anniversary of Fa-
ther 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 ac-
tivist 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 mis-
treatment and incarceration of individuals advo-
cating 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 
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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 writ-
ten 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. 
Æ 
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