Imagine waking up one morning to find your name splashed across a newspaper – not for your work, not for your ideas, but branded as a villain in a story you never got to tell. 

In Shukrawasa village of Madhya Pradesh’s Dewas district, that’s what unfolded for members of How Ought We Live, or HOWL. The collective of activists had been accused of conversion and already faced attacks from right-wing groups and police harassment. It now points to the pages of Hindi daily Dainik Bhaskar as its latest ordeal.

The group has eight members, and is led by Saurabh Banerjee, a former journalist and linguist. They were booked in a case of forced conversion and propagating the Maoist ideology in July. Banerjee is in jail.

Newslaundry had earlier reported on how the group had set up educational and health amenities in the village before they were targeted by a media hit job, Hindutva outrage and bulldozers. The first suspicious report on the group had appeared in a local daily called Sanjha Lokswami way before the FIR against them.

The claims of an ‘investigation’ 

On August 30, the paper’s Dewas edition published a “Bhaskar investigation”. Instead of evidence, it carried sweeping claims, alleging that Saurabh Banerjee was misguiding tribal villagers towards “pseudo-communism” and plotting meetings like “Naxalites of Balaghat”.

The story leaned on police leaks and the claims were introduced as “facts that have emerged after Banerjee’s arrest”. It claimed Banerjee’s questioning had revealed he had ties to Mamata Banerjee, once lived in Hong Kong, and received “lakhs” in foreign funding from a US-based company. It alleged that Banerjee claimed he gets Rs 1 lakh per month from an American firm for translation work. None of these allegations were backed by documents, and not a single HOWL member was contacted for comment.

A day later, on August 31, Bhaskar doubled down with another report: “Mastermind Panchi brainwashed villagers through social media.” This time, the sensational hook was that police had seized a biography of Pakistan’s Imran Khan from HOWL’s library. 

Both the reports contained quotes from the Dewas SP and Collector. “Saurabh faces a case of hurting religious sentiments under BNS section 299. Many big transactions have been found suspiciously in his account. The investigation is underway,” the SP said.

“A conspiracy to misguide tribals in the jungles and surrounding areas of Shukrawasa has been unearthed. Strict action will be taken if someone is found doing so. Inform the administration if there is any information about conversion,” the collector said.

What the ‘investigation’ left out

Bhaskar claimed in its report that the group was receiving funding worth lakhs from the US. But this was not foreign funding at all. Banerjee earned a steady income as a professional translator and subtitler for an American global linguistic company – he earned over Rs 17 lakh in payments between January 2024 to July 2025 from this firm alone. He also provided translations for G3 Translate, Amazon, McDonald’s, Tata, and Siemens. His clientele included Netflix shows and international documentaries. 

​​Hong Kong trips were work-related. From 2016–2020, Banerjee was contracted by HSBC Bank. Documents confirm his visits were professional assignments.

The report claimed the library had Imran Khan’s biography. What it left out was that the same library also housed biographies of Swami Vivekananda, Mahatma Gandhi, Sachin Tendulkar, Neem Karoli Baba, Bhagat Singh, B R Ambedkar, and Jawaharlal Nehru. It also contained the works of Munshi Premchand, Leo Tolstoy, Khalil Gibran, Mahasweta Devi, and dozens more.

The “brainwashing through social media” sounds implausible too. Banerjee had no active personal social media accounts since 2018. HOWL’s collective handles had just 350 Instagram followers, 10 on Twitter, and 145 on Facebook.

The headline mentioned Banerjee as “mastermind Panchhi”. What it omitted was that the name Panchhi wasn’t an underground alias but given by villagers after he built a treehouse in the village.

The report on August 30 claimed the group was registered “in the name of a flour mill” and transactions to the tune of “lakhs were found”. 

HOWL was more than a “flour mill”. What they did register was a Micro, Small and Medium Enterprise (MSME) to run poultry units, a flour mill, and fisheries – Newslaundry verified this by an Udyam certificate issued by the central government.

But this was not merely a commercial interest – the group’s activities were endorsed by the local gram panchayat to boost local self-reliance. Newslaundry reviewed a no objection certificate issued by the Parvatpura gram panchayat in April 2024.

“It is to certify that the HOWL group is doing social work through health service, poultry, flour mill etc in village Shukrawasa from the last three years. Through this villagers are getting employment and free health services. Gram panchayat doesn’t have any objection to the work done by them,” read the certificate.

Pranay Tripathi, one of the group’s members said, “We opened all these units  under MSME and involved villagers so that they gain employment and become self-reliant. We have not registered a group in the name of an atta chakki as reported by Dainik Bhaskar. In fact, we have not registered HOWL anywhere as an NGO or as any other entity.”

‘Defamation…no one asked us even once’

Far from being “brainwashed,” villagers described Banerjee and HOWL as lifelines.

“From education to health to self-employment, he helped us in every way. He encouraged us to become self-reliant by starting poultry businesses, so we could earn a steady income instead of migrating to cities for daily-wage work,” said Chintaman Rawat, 34. 

“I don’t even know what social media is,” said Kamla Bai, 65. “There are many in our village who do not know about social media but are connected to him. We got connected to him because of his good work.”

“He is being trapped, and sadly, newspapers are busy assassinating his character instead of reporting the facts,” said Subhas Chaudhary, 62. 

For HOWL’s members, the smear campaign has been devastating.

“Over the past few months, we have been subjected to fabricated charges, defamation, threats, life-threatening attacks, court proceedings, separation from loved ones, and inability to work or attend college. Amidst all this, when we were fighting for our friend’s bail, Dainik Bhaskar, a newspaper we believed to be reputable and truthful, published entirely false reports about us without even hearing our side of the story,” said Shweta Raghuvanshi, a HOWL member.

Tashiv Patel, another member, said, “The shocking part is that no one from the newspaper approached our group, family and committee members through any medium to take our versions for their published stories. This makes it clear enough that the media wants to set a particular narrative.”

Pranay Tripathi, another member, said, “Since when does preaching and practicing the Constitution and secularism become a sin in this country?...Surprisingly, Dainik Bhaskar called these activities as Naxalite…it has become easy to tag anyone Urban Naxals, anti-nationals and so on.”

“Why are the poor villagers absent from your stories? Those who could tell you in detail about us and our work.”

Harshvardhan Salecha, another HOWL member, said, “They have been juggling false and baseless information. Basically, try to convict somebody before the court’s judgment.”

Newslaundry reached out to Dainik Bhaskar’s National Editor L B Pant. He said he was out of the country and told us to get in touch with Madhya Pradesh bureau chief Anil Gupta. Newslaundry reached out to Gupta, who said he will speak to the reporter and get back to us. A questionnaire was sent to Gupta on WhatsApp on Thursday, and by email on Friday. The piece will be updated if we receive a response. 

Our latest Sena project tracks how elites take over public spaces in urban India, and the price that’s paid by you. Click here to contribute.