Swamy 2005

[Lorri Dent]

Microwave processing of foods; Dielectric properties of food materials; Ingredient interactions during microwave heating of foods; Moisture and fat migration in confectionery products; Modified atmosphere and modified humidity packaging of fresh produce; High pressure processing; Diffusion of nisin through packaging materials.

Hayman, M. M, Anantheswaran, R. C. & Knabel, S. J. 2007. The effects of growth temperature and growth phase on the inactivation of Listeria monocytogenes in whole milk subject to high pressure processing. Int. J. Food Microbiology 115:220-226.

Anantheswaran, R. C. & Ramaswamy. H. S. 2001. Bacterial destruction and enzyme inactivation during microwave heating. In: Handbook of Microwave Technology for Food Application (Ed. Datta & Anantheswaran). Pg. 191 Marcell Dekker, Inc.

Shukla, T. P. & Anantheswaran, R. C. 2001. Ingredient interactions and product development for microwave heating. In: Handbook of Microwave Technology for Food Application (Ed. Datta & Anantheswaran). Pg. 355. Marcell Dekker, Inc.

Anantheswaran, R. C. 2000. Irradiation: Is it consumer friendly? Case Studies in Science Collection. A web based collection of cases peer reviewed and published by the University of Buffalo, Buffalo, NY.

Casasnovas, J. and Anantheswaran, R. C. 1997. Characterization of starch granule swelling patterns during microwave heating. Engineering and Food at ICEF 7. Proceedings of the 7th International Congress on Engineering 7 Food held at Brighton, England. Pg. A176-179.

Anantheswaran, R. C. and Sunkara, R. 1996. Use of commercial moisture absorbers to increase the shelf life of fresh mushrooms. Mushroom Biology and Mushroom Products. Proceedings of the second International Conference held at Pennsylavania State University. Pg 563.

Heddleson, R. A., Doores, S., Anantheswaran, R. C. and Kuhn, G. D. 1996. Viability loss of Salmonella species, S. aureus, L. monocytogenes heated by microwave energy in food systems of various complexity. J. Food Protection 59:813.

Fajardo, T. A., Anantheswaran, R. C. and Puri, V. M. 1995. Effect of cooling on crack development and mechanical behavior of eggshells. Applied Engineering in Agriculture 12:49. Lin, J., Puri, V. M. and Anantheswaran, R. C. 1995.

Zhou, L. M., Puri, V. M., Anantheswaran, R. C. and Yeh, G. 1995. Finite element modeling of heat and mass transfer in food materials during microwave heating - model development and validation. J. Food Engineering 25:509.

Anantheswaran, R. C. and Liu, L. Z. 1994. Effect of viscosity and salt concentration on microwave heating of model non-Newtonian liquid foods in cylindrical containers. J. Microwave Power & Electromagnetic Energy 29:127.

Roy, S., Anantheswaran, R. C. & Beelman, R. B. 1993. Modified atmosphere and modified humidity packaging to extend the shelf life of fresh mushrooms (Agaricus bisporus) Proceedings of the 6th International Congress on Engineering of Foods, Chiba, Japan.

Anantheswaran, R. C., McLellan, M. R. & Nogueira, J. N. 1986. Effect of processing on particle size distribution in applesauce. In Food Engineering Applications (eds. M. Le Maguer & P. Jelen), Elsevier Applied Science Publishers Ltd., London.

Nogueira, J. N., McLellan, M. R. & Anantheswaran, R. C. 1985. Effect of fruit firmness and processing parameters on the particle size distribution in apple sauce of two cultivars. J. Food Sci. 50:744.

Anantheswaran, R. C., Rao, M. A. & Cooley, H. J. 1984. Energy consumption for processing and packaging of apple products. SEARCH - AGRICULTURE, Number 28, New York State Agricultural Experiment Station, Cornell University, Geneva, New York.

People hold posters and candles outside a Mumbai church holding a memorial mass for the Indian rights activist and Jesuit priest Father Stan Swamy on July 6, 2021. Swamy was detained for nine months without trial under Indian anti-terrorism laws, and died on July 5, 2021 ahead of a bail hearing, officials said. Indranil Mukherjee/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

The government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he said, was targeting him in retaliation for his advocacy on behalf of Indigenous people in Indian jails. A sociologist as well as a Roman Catholic clergyman, Swamy had recently published a study of 3,000 people jailed for being members of banned Maoist groups. He found that 97% of them had no such affiliation and that many of their trials were held without lawyers, in a language they didn't understand. He'd filed a case on their behalf in the state court of Jharkhand, where he lived. All of this had embarrassed the government, he said.

Swamy's office had since been raided several times. Police hauled away a loaner laptop he'd recently started using and then came back for his old desktop computer. They interrogated him for 15 hours over five days, he said, about a terrorism plot he knew nothing about.

Jesuit priest Stan Swamy recorded this selfie video in October 2020, two days before he was arrested. "What is happening to me is not unique. We are all aware how prominent intellectuals, lawyers, writers, poets, activists, student leaders are all put into jail just because they have expressed their dissent or raised questions about the ruling powers of India," he said.

Born Stanislaus Lourduswamy in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, the priest was one of 16 outspoken Modi critics who were jailed, one by one, in the aftermath of 2018 caste riots in western India. All were charged with terrorism offenses and conspiracy against the state, after police investigating the riots uncovered what they described as a brazen plot to assassinate the prime minister.

Swamy's 15 fellow prisoners included professors, lawyers, trade unionists and members of an improv theater troupe that performed skits poking fun at the government. All 16 denied the charges against them.

The evidence appeared to be damning: Letters and minutes of alleged terrorist cell meetings were found on Swamy's and his co-defendants' computers. One of the letters proposed a suicide attack against Modi.

But the suspects, their lawyers and independent experts who've reviewed the evidence in this case say the prisoners were framed. They say someone hacked into the suspects' phones and laptops and planted fake evidence on them.

"There were cases of files being planted, and then like the next day, the arrests went down. You could go your whole career in this industry and never find something that's as obvious," says Tom Hegel, a Washington-based cybersecurity expert who reviewed evidence in this case. "It's a slam-dunk. This is fabricated."

More than six years after the start of this case, the 15 remaining suspects are still awaiting trial. Seven have been granted bail. Eight remain in prison. And Modi is expected to win a third term, when election results come out this week.

This story has percolated for more than six years. Most of the digital forensics evidence obtained by NPR and published here has also appeared in Indian media. But despite outrage from human rights groups and criticism from the United Nations, the United States and Catholic Church officials, there has been no reexamination of this case by Indian authorities.

Some in the West may have been surprised by allegations that Indian diplomats were involved in the murder of a Sikh separatist leader in Canada last year and that other Indian officials may have been involved in trying to commit a similar crime on U.S. soil.

Narendra Modi, India's prime minister, greets supporters during an election rally of his Bharatiya Janata Party in Meerut, Uttar Pradesh, India, on March 31. Modi is seeking a third term in office. Votes will be counted on June 4. Prakash Singh/Bloomberg via Getty Images hide caption

But Freedom House, a Washington-based nonprofit that measures democratic decline, classifies India as only "partly free." It says those involved in investigating human rights abuses "face threats, legal harassment, excessive police force, and occasionally lethal violence" themselves. It also accuses Modi's Hindu nationalist government of politicizing the judiciary and denying its opponents due process.

In March, one of Modi's top rivals, Arvind Kejriwal, leader of the opposition Aam Aadmi Party, was jailed on bribery allegations. The largest opposition party, the Indian National Congress, had its bank accounts frozen in a tax dispute. The timing of both, just before voting began in the current elections, prompted the U.S. State Department to call for "timely legal processes" for each. Those bank accounts have since been unfrozen, and Kejriwal has since been freed on bail, after missing several weeks of campaigning and voting, in elections that last six weeks and in which voting happens in stages.

The defendants in this case worked with three Indian minority groups: Indigenous people, or Adivasis, who comprise more than 8% of the population, or more than 100 million people; India's 200 million Muslims, the country's largest religious minority, increasingly demonized and marginalized under Modi's Hindu nationalist rule; and those on the lower rungs of South Asia's caste hierarchy, including about 200 million Dalits, who used to be called "untouchable" and have long been shunned by other castes as such.

On New Year's Eve 2017, tens of thousands of members of minority groups who supported left-wing parties gathered en masse on the banks of the Bhima River in western India's Maharashtra state. They were there to celebrate the 200th anniversary, the following day, of a rare battlefield victory for Dalits.

"In retrospect, that pledge was important, actually. ... The government was scared," says Anuradha Sonule, 35, a member of a theater troupe that performed at the anniversary celebrations. "We gathered people in quantity."

Indians have traditionally voted along caste and clan lines. But Modi has changed that. He has sought to unite all Hindu voters. He comes from a lower-caste community himself, even though his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has upper-caste roots.

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