Rana Ayyub’s Gujarat Files and the Politics of the Counter-Archive
Rana Ayyub’s Gujarat Files and the Politics of the Counter-Archive Posted on 16th February, 2026 (GMT 01:27 hrs) ABSTRACT Gujarat Files: Anatomy of a Cover Up by Rana Ayyub is a hard-hitting, self-published investigative book (2016) based on an eight-month undercover sting operation she conducted in 2010–2011 while working for Tehelka, posing as “Maithili Tyagi,” a fictional Hindu-American filmmaker sympathetic to RSS ideology. Through covert recordings of candid conversations with senior Gujarat police officers, bureaucrats, politicians, and insiders—including a direct meeting with then-Chief Minister Narendra Modi—the book presents verbatim transcripts alleging state complicity in the 2002 Gujarat riots (an anti-Muslim pogrom killing over 1,000), orchestrated inaction during the violence, evidence tampering, fake encounters (such as those involving Ishrat Jahan, Sohrabuddin Sheikh, and others), extrajudicial killings used for political gain, caste-based exploitation in law...