The ominous start to 2025, with the reported disappearance of journalist Mukesh Chandrakar days after he reported on the poor quality of road construction and the chilling discovery of his body in a septic tank in Bastar on January 3, marked an alarming disintegration of free speech protection in India. A staggering 14,875 instances of free speech violations were recorded through the year, including nine killings – of eight journalists and one social media influencer, 117 arrests of citizens, including eight journalists and an unprecedented 11,385 instances of censorship and 208 of lawfare signifying “mass” censorship and criminal cases lodged against multiple persons.

While India’s dismal record of freedom of expression in the last decade is not new, granular data recorded by Free Speech Collective (FSC) illustrates how the spike in figures of censorship and internet control has rendered all citizens vulnerable. This is in addition to the data recorded by the Free Speech Tracker in other categories of free speech violation—from deaths, attacks, and law fare including arrests to censorship in news, cinema, literature, and academia, as well as government policies and laws that regulate the free flow of information.

Read the annual free speech report for 2025 here.