Indian political consultants are running covert social media campaigns for politicians overseas, with researchers identifying accounts based in India promoting a US Democratic candidate before Michigan’s Senate primary.
The operation is part of a wider network of so-called shadow campaigns that has also been used in elections in Africa and South America. Consultants and content creators describe a system in which anonymous pages spread material that official campaign accounts would avoid, while concealing who commissioned and paid for it.
At least 28 accounts on X were found sharing videos supporting Haley Stevens during the Democratic primary in Michigan, generating more than seven million views, according to Antibot4Navalny, an anonymous group that investigates coordinated online influence operations. A review found that at least 15 of the accounts were posting from India.
Stevens lost the August 4 primary to Abdul El-Sayed, who became the Democratic candidate for the midterm election. Researchers at Clemson University’s Media Forensic Hub also identified Indian accounts and pages being used to support Stevens.
Indian consultants’ growing electoral footprint
The US is the latest known arena in which Indian social media operators have been hired to influence voters. Political consultants interviewed for the investigation said they had worked, or sought work, in countries including Kenya, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Australia, Germany and Suriname.
Rajan Kumar, a digital content creator from Ahmedabad, said he was paid about seven dollars a day to produce material for William Ruto’s successful Kenyan presidential campaign in 2022. He was not employed directly by Ruto’s official campaign, but created posts for anonymous social media pages supporting it.
Kumar said he produced about 50 posts under a monthly contract, and on some days was expected to deliver as many as 100 pieces of content. The work was coordinated through Telegram groups, with contributors kept unaware of the identities of many others in the chain linking them to senior campaign figures.
His tasks included cutting speeches and interviews by opponents in ways that distorted their meaning, as well as making posters containing false claims about Ruto’s popularity and electoral prospects.
“If there’s a woman politician, we simply link her to someone to damage her reputation. It’s one of the easiest ways to discredit,” Kumar said. He added that “all controversial content” was sent to shadow pages for “extensive distribution”.
Ruto won the election and became Kenya’s fifth president. Kumar said the operation required participants to conceal their tracks, with chats deleted and SIM cards frequently destroyed.
The risks were illustrated by the deaths of two Indian consultants, Zulfiqar Ahmad Khan and Mohamed Zaid Sami Kidwai, who disappeared in Nairobi in July 2022 while working for Ruto’s campaign. They were found dead in October, allegedly after being abducted by an elite Kenyan police unit.
After taking office, Ruto disbanded the unit. Fifteen officers were accused of murder, but Kenya’s High Court terminated the charges in August 2026 after prosecutors asked for the investigation to be discontinued.
‘There are no limits’
Political consultancies have become central to election campaigns in India, where their work is marketed as evidence of their ability to deliver results in a complex electoral system.
Consultants said shadow pages can be created from scratch, rebranded for a particular campaign or hired from existing operators. They may also take control of established pages on Facebook, Instagram or YouTube before using them to distribute political material.
The arrangements can allow campaigns to distance themselves from material regarded as too controversial for official accounts. They also create a separation between voters and the people commissioning the messages.
Amogh Dhar Sharma, author of a book about Indian political consultancies, said politicians preferred voters’ attention to remain on events visible in public. But, he argued, significant influence could be exercised away from scrutiny.
“The way it creates certain, hidden sources of power in a democracy is one of the biggest ethical concerns,” Sharma said.
Several consultants said platform rules prohibiting the sale or transfer of accounts, false identities and undisclosed political advertising were routinely bypassed. One consultant, Tushar Giri, said virtual private networks could be used to evade restrictions in particular countries, while changing an account’s stated country of origin could allow foreign operators to run targeted advertisements.
Giri said the industry had developed into “a big wholesale market to run these shadow political campaigns”. He compared the practice with buying inexpensive manufactured goods overseas, saying elections could be manipulated anywhere at low cost from India.
“We are manipulating elections; there is no other way to say it,” Giri said. “The concept of electoral democracy is so overrated. There is no free will for voters. Everything is manipulated.”
Sharma described the development as an extension of India’s business-process outsourcing industry, with campaigns outsourcing their least transparent activities to companies operating far from the countries where elections are taking place.
He said the physical distance between consultants and the politicians they serve gave those involved “plausible deniability” if their operations were exposed.
Anonymous payments and hidden networks
The secrecy extends beyond the online activity to the way consultants are paid. One consultant said companies abroad were used to employ individuals on paper for unrelated work, creating fronts through which campaign money could be channelled.
Several consultants also described the use of hawala, an informal money-transfer system based on brokers and trust rather than conventional banking. At least three identified export businesses in Delhi’s Chandni Chowk market as a hub for such transactions.
One consultant recalled carrying an Indian banknote with a particular serial number as a code for collecting payment. “I saw people use 10-rupee notes to collect millions in cash,” the consultant said. “It was like I’m in a movie.”
The consultant declined to identify the country or campaign involved in that transaction.
Giri said the willingness of an agency to deploy increasingly aggressive tactics could determine the rewards it received. “What are the limits?” he said. “If one agency can execute filthy tricks to manipulate a voter — and think beyond the political party’s own imagination — they are rewarded accordingly.”
“The dirtier you can get, the more money and opportunities there are,” he added.
