On 1st June, the Karnataka High Court dismissed petitions seeking the quashing of a criminal case registered under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) against six persons associated with the Indian operations of US-based Christian missionary organisation The Timothy Initiative. OpIndia accessed judgment in the matter.
While dismissing the petitions, Justice M Nagaprasanna said that “clandestine funding of extremism” is among the gravest threats to national security. He added that courts must remain circumspect about stopping an investigation involving economic subversion and the suspected financing of activities in Left Wing Extremism-affected areas.
The observations were made while dismissing petitions filed by Micah Mark, R Jonathan Sushil, Ajit Mathai, Varghese Chacko, Bablu Kurmi and Supreme Joy. They had challenged the FIR registered by the Kothanur Police in Bengaluru on 11th June 2026 against them, The Timothy Initiative and others. OpIndia’s detailed report on the FIR can be checked here.
The FIR, which was registered on the complaint of an Assistant Director of the Enforcement Directorate (ED), invoked Sections 13, 17 and 18 of the UAPA, dealing with unlawful activities, raising funds for terrorist acts and conspiracy or facilitation of a terrorist act. It also included several provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) related to criminal conspiracy, cheating, forgery and the disappearance of evidence.
“The case concerns national security. National security is the invisible architecture upon which the sovereignty, stability and constitutional order of a nation rest,” Justice Nagaprasanna said.
The court clarified that its observations were limited to deciding whether the investigation should be stopped at the initial stage and would not bind or influence the investigating authorities.
What the case against The Timothy Initiative is about
The criminal case against The Timothy Initiative and its members originated from an investigation initiated by the Enforcement Directorate under the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA). According to the investigating agency, Micah Mark is the key person handling TTI’s financial operations in India.
He was intercepted at Kempegowda International Airport in Bengaluru on 18th April 2026. Upon being searched, he was found carrying 24 foreign debit cards issued by Truist Bank in the United States. The ED informed the court that all 24 cards were printed in the name of “Santosh Kumar”, a common name in India. Earlier cards were reportedly issued using regional descriptions such as “NE-1”, “NE-2” and “Southern Region-1”.
The ED stated that the common name was deliberately used to conceal the identities of the actual users and was intended to bypass Know Your Customer requirements and prevent law enforcement agencies from tracing the cards to the individuals operating them.
The agency said more than 1,000 such debit cards had been distributed across India over several years. The cards were used by TTI functionaries to withdraw foreign funds from Indian ATMs in repeated transactions, usually amounting to Rs 10,000 each.
The ED’s preliminary examination reportedly found that around Rs 92.55 crore, equivalent to approximately USD 9.99 million, was utilised in India between November 2025 and April 2026 through this mechanism. It further found that approximately Rs 44 crore was withdrawn using foreign debit cards across Karnataka, Chhattisgarh, Assam and other states between January 2024 and March 2026.
The ED particularly flagged withdrawals in the Left Wing Extremism (LWE)-affected Dhamtari and Bastar regions of Chhattisgarh. It said around Rs 6.34 crore was withdrawn in these regions over the past few years.
Of this, approximately Rs 3.2 crore was withdrawn through 3,200 transactions of Rs 10,000 each from a single AU Small Finance Bank ATM located at Vijay Plaza on Bastar Road in Dhamtari. The withdrawals were made using two foreign debit cards. The ED said such systematic cash withdrawals had taken place under the supervision of Varghese Chacko, who served as a field-level functionary of TTI and resided in Dhamtari.
According to the agency, a parallel cash-based financial network in Naxal-affected areas posed “a serious threat to the security and financial integrity of India” and could facilitate the movement of illicit funds for unlawful activities.
The ED said in its complaint to the Karnataka Police that, shortly after its search operation, TTI’s global portal became inaccessible to users in India. The data maintained on cloud servers controlled by TTI in the United States was reportedly deleted through remote access.
The agency termed this the destruction of evidence during an ongoing search operation. It also said that Micah Mark had acknowledged that his account had been deleted from the back end.
The ED identified Ajit Verghese Mathai as the overall finance head of TTI’s India operations. It said the debit cards were distributed under his direct supervision and that Rs 37 lakh in cash, withdrawn using such cards, was seized from his premises.
Jonathan Rajan was described as the overall operations in-charge of TTI in India. The ED said he supervised TTI training programmes, selected the persons conducting the training, identified venues and sent fund requirements to the organisation’s finance team.
The finance team, in turn, arranged money from TTI in the United States through the foreign debit cards, the agency said.
What the defence argued against the UAPA case
Senior advocate MS Shyam Sundar appeared for Micah Mark. He argued that the ED had no legal authority to communicate the information collected during the FEMA investigation to the Karnataka Police for the registration of a separate criminal case. He contended that the ED was acting under FEMA and was not conducting an investigation under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA). The defence argued that no Enforcement Case Information Report had been registered under the PMLA.
Section 66(2) of the PMLA, under which the ED shared its findings with the Karnataka Director General of Police, could not be invoked in the absence of a PMLA investigation, the defence submitted.
It was further argued that Section 37 of FEMA permitted the ED to conduct searches and seizures but did not authorise it to share the information obtained during such proceedings with another agency.
The petitioners also challenged the invocation of the UAPA, describing its provisions as drastic and stringent. The defence said there was no basic prima facie material showing that the petitioners had committed unlawful activities, raised money for terrorist acts or conspired to facilitate a terrorist act.
It claimed that the UAPA provisions had been deliberately added as though Micah Mark was involved in terrorism. The petitioners were associated with a Christian missionary organisation that worked for poor people, the defence said.
The lawyers appearing for the other five accused argued that there was no evidence establishing any link between them and Micah Mark. They said the UAPA had been applied merely on the suspicion that the accused might have supported unlawful activities against the country.
Micah Mark’s counsel also drew the court’s attention to an earlier writ petition in which Mark accused ED officials of custodial assault and coercion. Mark had apprehended in that petition that additional offences would be imposed upon him. The defence suggested that the subsequent registration of the UAPA case was connected to this dispute.
What the prosecution and ED told the court
However, State Public Prosecutor BN Jagadeesha opposed the petitions and said the investigation had only just begun. He stated that, given the seriousness of the offences, it should be allowed to continue. He submitted, “It is not that the petitioners are running a missionary. It appears that in the garb of missionary they are indulging in unlawful activities.”
Special Public Prosecutor Madhu N Rao, representing the ED, told the court that the 24 debit cards recovered from Micah Mark were only part of a much wider operation. The ED argued that hundreds of foreign cards had been issued and that close to Rs 100 crore had been withdrawn through the network. It said the funds were used in Left Wing Extremism-affected regions of Karnataka, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand.
Left Wing Extremist organisations were not merely banned organisations but banned terrorist outfits, the ED told the court. Therefore, if the accused were financing such organisations or their activities, the investigation could not be stopped before the money trail and the end use of the funds were established.
The agency described the material uncovered so far as only the “tip of the iceberg”. It also rejected the contention that the FIR was a counterblast to Mark’s allegations against ED officials, saying that the case had been registered over activities affecting national security.
The ED’s complaint to the Karnataka Police accused TTI and its Indian network of creating an elaborate mechanism to bring foreign funds into India without FCRA registration or prior permission and without routing the money through a designated FCRA bank account.
The agency said the cards were circulated among persons who were not the account holders and that the money was withdrawn in cash, making its subsequent movement difficult to trace.
Court says ED had the power to share information
The High Court rejected the defence’s interpretation of Section 66(2) of the PMLA. Justice Nagaprasanna observed that the provision expressly empowered the ED Director or another authorised officer to share information with the appropriate agency if material in their possession indicated a violation of any other law.
The purpose of the provision was to ensure that information uncovered under one enactment did not remain confined to that investigation when it revealed offences under a separate law, the court said.
Accepting the petitioners’ argument that the ED could share information only in relation to offences already being investigated under the PMLA would amount to reading the provision “into irrelevance and rendering the legislative intent nugatory”.
“Statutory interpretation cannot be so myopic as to defeat the plain purpose of the enactment,” the court said. The judge also rejected the argument that the ED could not disclose information gathered during FEMA proceedings.
“Statutes operating in cognate fields must be construed harmoniously, not in watertight compartments,” the court observed, adding that FEMA and the PMLA had to be read in tandem. The court said the case began with the recovery of 24 debit cards carrying the same name. What initially appeared to be a financial irregularity had, during the ED’s searches, reportedly revealed a much wider network.
The Directorate, therefore, could not be faulted for informing the jurisdictional police, the court held.
Prima facie material sufficient to continue UAPA investigation
On the application of the UAPA, the court said it was not required at this stage to decide whether the petitioners were guilty. The limited question was whether there was enough prima facie material to justify an investigation under Sections 13, 17 and 18 of the law.
“The material presently available, particularly the communication under Section 66(2), cannot be said to be so barren as to warrant judicial interdiction,” the order stated. Any deeper examination at the preliminary stage would intrude upon the investigating agency’s domain and could prejudice either the prosecution or the accused, it added.
The court also rejected the argument that accused numbers 1, 3, 4, 5 and 6 had no connection with Micah Mark. It noted that the available records identified Ajit Mathai as the person handling TTI’s finances, Jonathan Rajan as the person supervising its India operations and the other accused as functionaries facilitating ATM withdrawals and the deployment of funds.
“This may be the narration of allegation, but the link in the chain of events is established in the communication made under Section 66(2) of PMLA,” the court said.
Justice Nagaprasanna observed that funding becomes “the oxygen that enables extremist movements to survive and proliferate”.
“The danger of extremist financing lies not merely in the money transferred, but in the consequences it unleashes. Left unchecked, such funding can transform ideological extremism into organised violence, threatening national unity and public safety,” the judge said.
The court said that protecting national security required financial monitoring, strict regulatory oversight, inter-agency coordination and action against covert financial networks sustaining extremism.
“In the teeth of such accusations as observed hereinabove, investigation is not merely permissible, it becomes imperative,” it concluded while dismissing the petitions.
What OpIndia’s investigation revealed about The Timothy Initiative
OpIndia had earlier published several reports as part of detailed investigation into The Timothy Initiative, its foreign financial network and the methods used to expand its Christian conversion and church-planting operations in India.
TTI began as “Project India” in 2007 and was renamed The Timothy Initiative in 2009. Its founder, David Nelms, first travelled to India in 1992.
The organisation has projected itself as a rapidly multiplying church-planting network. It has claimed to have planted more than 2.68 lakh churches and created over 23.92 lakh “disciples” through its international operations.
Its system relies upon several layers of local workers identified as “Pauls”, “Timothys” and “Tituses”. Local recruits are trained through a series of books and are expected to train further recruits, establish house churches and expand the network with limited expenditure.
OpIndia’s examination of TTI’s training material found instructions for entering Hindu-dominated villages, approaching local residents and avoiding methods that could attract suspicion.
Its material promoted “softer forms of outreach” in sensitive areas and instructed workers to consider caste dynamics while selecting local leaders. One training book said that choosing leaders from individual castes could be more effective because such persons were “more powerful in reaching the local people to Christ”.
The training material also portrayed Hindu villages as spiritually hostile spaces and referred to villages being under “evil spirits, or a Hindu god that watches over them”.
OpIndia had also documented TTI’s connections with several foreign churches and Christian networks that promoted church planting, missionary training, field visits and fundraising for its India-focused operations.
Though the High Court did not reach a conclusion on whether the money withdrawn through the foreign cards ultimately financed terrorist or extremist activities, it allowed the investigating agencies to continue tracing the network, the cash withdrawals, the deployment of funds and the role played by each accused.
