Controversial US-based ‘researcher’ Joyojeet Pal, known for his obscure study to discourage investigation into the Sushant Singh Rajput case, is organising a hybrid conference to peddle anti-India propaganda in the US.
Pal is an Associate Professor at the University of Michigan. He is also the organiser of the ‘Social Media and Society in India’ symposium, which brings anti-India forces under one roof.
The 5th edition of the international conference is set to be held between the 4th and 5th of April this year in Ann Arnbor city of Michigan.
The event is sponsored by the School of Information, the Center for South Asia Studies and the Year of Democracy – all of which are affiliated with the University of Michigan.
Speakers at the ‘Social Media and Society in India’ event
A cursory look at the list of speakers highlights the nefarious agenda of the organiser of the conference.
- Mahua Moitra
Mahua Moitra is a Trinamool Congress (TMC) MP from Krishnanagar constituency. She is famous for making Hinduphobic ‘gaumutra jibes’, hurling expletives at fellow Parliamentarians and uncanny obsession with ‘khaki underwear.’ The defining moment of her career was her expulsion from the Parliament in ‘cash for query’ scam.
In October 2023, the Indian political scene experienced a major tremor as BJP MP Nishkant Dubey wrote to the ethics committee seeking an inquiry against TMC MP Mahua Moitra in the ‘Cash for Query’ matter.
He based his complaint on the letter written by Supreme Court lawyer Jai Anant Dehadrai, who alleged that most of the questions asked by the TMC MP in Lok Sabha directly or indirectly benefit businessman Darshan Hiranandani.
Dehadrai also accused Moitra of “kidnapping” his pet dog Henry, adding another layer of complications to Mahuagate. Moitra filed a case against Dubey and Dehadrai but never denied accepting gifts.
Interestingly, she was accused of sharing her Lok Sabha credentials with Hiranandani so he could post questions independently. Hiranandani has turned approver in the case and submitted an affidavit suggesting the allegations against Moitra are true.
On 8th December 2023, Lok Sabha expelled Trinamool Congress’s MP Mahua Moitra based on the recommendations of the Ethics Committee in a cash-for-query case. Moitra was expelled hours after the Ethics Committee report was tabled in Lok Sabha.
- Zeeshan Ayub
Zeeshan Ayyub, who has appeared in several films, TV series and web series, made headlines for the wrong reasons many times. When we searched his timeline, one particular post drew attention.
Notably, on 24th February 2020, when the anti-Hindu Delhi Riots of 2020 were going on, he said on Twitter (now X), “Why it feels like those who support CAA are talking about bloodshed and killing along with CAA!!??”
Ayyub tried to divert the blame for riots to those who were in support of CAA while it was the other way around.
Notably, he also used social media to give out messages to gather at protest sites. In January 2020, he published a short video on Facebook asking people from Jamia and Okhla to gather at Shaheen Bagh as police reached there in two buses.
In September 2020, he made an Instagram post calling for the release of Khalid. His wife Rasika had also featured in chats
A month later, he posted a video in support of Khalid where he called the Delhi Riots accused “peace-loving and non-violent”. In short, Zeeshan used every possible platform, let it be media or social media to propagate against CAA and support the likes of Umar Khalid.
Apart from his activist activities, Zeeshan has been surrounded by controversies on several occasions. One of the most talked about controversies was the derogatory portrayal of Bhagwan Shiv in the web series Tandav which was later removed following the protests by the public and police complaints.
- Suchitra Vijayan
Suchitra Vijayan is the founder of the George Soros-funded-Polis Project. A casual look at Suchitra Vijayan’s Twitter timeline shows her political antecedents. She had expressed her open support and admiration for Delhi riot accused Umar Khalid.
#UmarKhalid has been in prison for 600 days. pic.twitter.com/6zKkcN2ibk
— Suchitra Vijayan 🇵🇸 (@suchitrav) May 6, 2022
In 2023, Suchitra Vijayan also supported ‘journalist’ Irfan Mehraj who was arrested in connection with a ‘terror funding case.’ NIA had pointed out that Mehraj was a close associate of ‘activist’ Khurram Parvez and a member of the Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Societies (JKCCS).
Kashmiri journalist @IrfanMeraj was arrested by the National Investigation Agency under draconian UAPA in Srinagar today. He has been moved to Delhi.
— Suchitra Vijayan 🇵🇸 (@suchitrav) March 21, 2023
Irfan is a reporter and the founding editor of Wande Magazine. pic.twitter.com/amvRKfe72G
According to Disinfo Lab, the Facebook page of the Polis Project has a Pakistan-based admin, even though her entire propaganda work is based on India.
#PolisProject is a New-York based ‘research & journalism’ project. Polis Project is also a regular at IAMC & JFA's events.
— DisInfo Lab (@DisinfoLab) April 28, 2022
Interestingly, while Polis Project’s entire work is on India, the Facebook page is run by a Pakistan-based admin!
(6/11) pic.twitter.com/ST5ZsOUcYs
The OSNIT handle also stated that ‘The Polis Project’ is regularly featured in events of the Islamist organisation ‘Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC).
- Sonam Wangchuk
Controversial Ladakh activist Sonam Wangchuk has also been roped in as one of the speakers at the ‘Social Media and Society in India’ symposium.
In March 2024, he courted controversy by making derogatory remarks about Lord Ram and Sita while trying to target the Modi government.
“I see it in the way that they [Central government] turned out to be such Ram who freed Sita from Raavan but didn’t take her home rather they put her on sale in an open market. So like this, they have left Ladakh open for industrialists and mining lobbies without any protection [from the government],” Sonam Wangchuk had claimed.
In February 2025, Sonam Wangchuk participated in the ‘Breathe Pakistan’ conference, which was held in the city of Islamabad. The ‘climate change conference’ was organised by the group ‘Dawn Media’ to create awareness about climate change in Pakistan.
OpIndia had reported in February 2023 how villagers in Ladakh complained about Sonam Wangchuk causing more harm than good through his Ice Stupa artificial glacier project.
- Peeing Human
Joyojeet Pal had also invited Ramit Verma, the man behind the AAP propaganda channel ‘Official Peeing Human,’ as a speaker.
In February 2020, the handle had falsely claimed that goons belonging to the BJP and RSS were harassing girls at Gargi College, University of Delhi.
Yes that will be very important in days to come when goons let loose by BJP/RSS start harrassing girls openly like they did in Gargi College https://t.co/xhYtvEbs8W
— Official PeeingHuman (@thepeeinghuman) February 11, 2020
At that time, the then DCP Atul Thakur told journalist Swati Goel Sharma that investigations did not reveal any political affiliation of those involved in Gargi college harassment case.
“They all are either college students or their friends,” he said, rejecting allegations that the attackers were from BJP and RSS.
- Raqib Hameed Naik
One of the speakers at the event is an Islamist and vicious fake news peddler named Raqib Hameed Naik. He is the founder of anti-Hindu disinformation outlet ‘Hindutva Watch,’ the Twitter account of which was withheld in India in January 2024.
HW started as a Twitter handle in 2019, & its website also became operational in the same year. It had no fathers until owned by Raqib Hameed Naik in 2023 with the help of WaPo journo Pranshu Verma. Verma didn’t even check the dates claiming it was founded in April 2021!
— DisInfo Lab (@DisinfoLab) September 30, 2023
(2/n) pic.twitter.com/D4xfOF1OHB
Raqib Hameed Naik is also infamous for denying the Hindu genocide, perpetrated by radical Islamists in the Kashmir Valley, in the early 1990s. Naik had also mocked the Hindu ‘Shivling’ found inside the Gyanvapi mosque in Kashi.
- Pratik Sinha
Pratik Sinha is a well-known #MeToo accused and the co-founder of Alt News, an Islamist propaganda outlet masquerading as a ‘fact-checking’ website. Sinha has been involved in peddling fake news on several occasions.
In December 2020, popular X user @BefittingFacts took to Twitter to expose the AltNews co-founder Pratik Sinha for flooding social media platforms with fake and misleading information.
The Twitter user said that Sinha, a Hindu-hater masquerading as a ‘fact-checker’, made a career out of abusing and denigrating PM Modi through dubious portals such as Truth of Gujarat, eopinion and Alt News.
In the aftermath of demonetisation back in 2016, Sinha had shared images of people standing in long queues at financial institutes to allege that people had to go through hardships because of the Modi government’s decision. However, in doing so, Sinha shared a picture from 2014, about two years before the Demonetisation to portray that the decision had caused misery among people.
2- Using picture of 2004 to mock Gau Rakshak in 2016. In the picture in 2004 many cows had died to due to Nitrate poisoning but @free_thinker using this pic in 2016 to mock Gau Rakshak.
— Facts (@BefittingFacts) November 30, 2020
Archive- https://t.co/1j0QXv0Y7Z pic.twitter.com/mvMqCWmvTO
In another instance shared by the Twitter user, Sinha was caught using an image from 2004 to peddle the condition of cows in Gujarat in 2016. In the year 2016, Sinha shared another picture on his Twitter account where cows were seen lying on the road.
Sinha, in his bid to mock the Gau Rakshaks, commented, “Gau Matas rotting and being scavenged on in Gujarat. Where are the sons professing undying love for their mata?”
The image shared by Sinha was from 2004 when many cows had died because of Nitrate poisoning but Sinha felt no compunction in using a 12-year-old picture to ridicule the Gau Rakshaks.
Sinha also actively participated in perpetuating the lie regarding PM Modi’s alleged promise to transfer Rs 15 lakhs to bank accounts if elected to power.
- Neha Dixit
Another controversial speaker invited to the event includes ‘freelance journalist’ Neha Dixit.
In 2016, Dixit published a misleading article in Outlook magazine, wherein she falsely accused two RSS-backed organisations (Rashtra Sevika Samiti and Sewa Bharati) of trafficking 31 young tribal girls from Assam to ‘Hinduise’ them.
5 years later in May 2021, she repeated the same outrageous claims against Sewa International without furnishing any evidence.
In a tweet, she claimed, “Dear NRIs, Please don’t donate to Sewa International for Covid relief. They work as the welfare wing of RSS. Apart from supporting BJP govt’s massive crimes including abandoning Indian citizens in the pandemic, they also traffic children from tribal areas to indoctrinate them.”
A case was thereafter filed against her in the Patiala House court.
- Kunal Majumder
Kunal Majunder, who had previously worked with Tarun Tejpal and ‘the ‘Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)’ was also listed as one of the speakers on the website of the 2025 ‘Social Media and Society in India’ symposium.
OpIndia had reported in 2015 how Kunal Majumder had deliberately misconstrued a statement by former US President Barack Obama. The ‘journalist’ had alleged Obama supposedly delivered a ‘speech against Hindutva loonies’ although he did not.
Instead of issuing a correction, Majumder deleted the tweet. He had also retweeted another tweet, falsely claiming that the Modi government photoshopped the image of the Preamble of the Indian Constitution to remove the terms ‘secular’ and ‘socialist.’
In 2022, Majumder extended his support to scam-accused ‘journalist’ Rana Ayyub and targeted OpIndia for highlighting accusations against her of siphoning funds meant for COVID-19 relief work.
The curious case of Joyojeet Pal
Joyojeet Pal shot to fame in October 2020 when the leftist propaganda website The Wire passed off an obscure study, conducted by him and his acquaintances in their personal capacities, as official research paper published by the University of Michigan.
The Wire published an article titled “Sushant Singh Rajput: Study Reveals BJP’s Hand in Hyping Conspiracy Theories.”
It claimed that the University of Michigan determined through a study that ‘members of the BJP’ somehow amplified conspiracy theories surrounding the unnatural death of actor Sushant Singh Rajput.
The article claimed that the researchers ‘analysed’ social media trends over three months to conclude that pro-BJP social media handles ‘cranked up the rumour mill’.
The Wire alleged that people demanding a fair probe into the actor’s death were ‘troll attacks’. The Wire did not clarify it was not an official study by the University of Michigan. It was also picked up by India Today.
How #SushantSinghRajput death was exploited- Listen in to what Professor Joyojeet Pal of University of Michigan said about his new study and its findings.
— IndiaToday (@IndiaToday) October 6, 2020
(@rahulkanwal)#ITVideo pic.twitter.com/ooW8Vnve2i
Later, the varsity clarified the facts to OpIndia in an email. “This study was conducted while he was on leave. As a faculty member he has a website on the university’s domain where he is able to showcase his work,” the then spokesperson Rick Fitzgerald told OpIndia.
In April 2023, Joyojeet Pal was in the spotlight once again over his ‘new study‘, decrying the expose of far-left Hungarian-American billionaire George Soros.
Two months earlier, Soros exploited the Adani-Hindenburg controversy and launched a scathing attack on the Indian government.
He had claimed, “Modi and business tycoon Adani are close allies. Their fate is intertwined…Adani Enterprises tried to raise funds in the stock market, but it failed. Adani is accused of stock manipulation and his stock collapsed like a house of cards.”
Soros is one of the most abused people on social media & was recently trolled on Twitter for his comments on Modi/Indian democracy.
— joyojeet pal (@joyopal) April 26, 2023
We studied the Twitter response, which is enlightening on collective political tweeting and Indians’ position on Global right-leaning movements
🧵 pic.twitter.com/6Q8RMQeOyK
Soros accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of crony capitalism. “Modi is silent on the subject, but he will have to answer questions from foreign investors and in parliament,” he added.
The Hungarian-American billionaire also said that the ‘shakedown’ caused to the Indian markets due to the Hindenburg Research report will result in ‘much needed institutional reforms’ and ‘democratic revival’.
George Soros and his vicious ecosystem of NGOs, activists and journalists had been trying to prove PM Modi as an ‘electoral autocrat’ who needed to be ousted for the ‘greater good’ of this country. And it has been a work in progress for a long time.
Joyojeet Pal and his co-author thus published a ‘new study’ in April 2023 to defend George Soros. It was initially titled ‘Enter a new enemy: George Soros and Indian Twitter’ but later changed to ‘The Framing of George Soros as a Political Puppetmaster on Indian Social Media Networks.’
Joyojeet Pal raised objections at the impact that OpIndia made by revealing the ties of George Soros to the Deep State and his attempts to undermine Indian democracy.
“Media that lean pro-government like TimesNow, Republic and OpIndia covered Soros the most, with OpIndia being most effective in getting eyeballs...In addition to the Congress, a series of messages aims to vilify a range of people funded at some point or another by Open Society. OpIndia leads the charge on this by doxing several individuals & NGOs presenting them as anti-national,” his study conceded.
In October 2023 and January 2024, Pal delivered seminars on the ‘intersection of online influencers with political actors in India.’
In June 2023, he published another ‘study’ wherein Pal claimed that former Chief Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud was being accused of being ‘a foreign agent, a threat to democracy and an internal enemy’ by troll accounts with ties to the BJP.
OpIndia pointed out in November last year how the left-liberal ecosystem in India had been targeting the ex-CJI depending on whether a particular case was decided as per their whims and fancies.
The Social Media & Society in India conference @UMich is on Apr 8-9, 2024, the largest conference of its kind featuring talks and workshops on culture, politics, industry, policy, and misinformation.
— joyojeet pal (@joyopal) March 29, 2024
Register free to attend:https://t.co/N2A94NaGoD pic.twitter.com/bIvmuj9g0v
Joyojeet Pal has organised 4 editions of the ‘Social Media and Society in India (SMSI)’ symposium at the University of Michigan since its inception. And each time, he had been successful in platforming a large number of anti-India propagandists on one stage. The 2025 edition appears to be no different.
