NEW DELHI: A full-page colour advertisement appeared in Wall Street Journal on Saturday with the intention of smearing Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, ministers, judges and bureaucrats. It has now been identified that Indian-linked hands are behind the act intended to defame the country. The advertisement was published mentioning the names of 11 Indians including ministers, bureaucrats and judges. The ad blamed the Narendra Modi Government.

An investigation found that former CEO of the Devas Group is behind the act. He spent crores against the top government officials and circulated through the American media.

The ad was issued by an anti-India group linked to Ramachandran Viswanathan, a financial criminal, who fled India after being accused in a money laundering case.

Kanchan Gupta, senior advisor to the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, tweeted that the US media is being used as a weapon of shame by fraudsters.

The Supreme Court had also issued a verdict against Ramachandran Viswanathan, found to be behind advertisements targeting India and the central government. This is why he decided to defame the judges in the advertisement. Supreme Court Judges V Ramasubramanian and Hemant Gupta are mentioned in the ad. It is these judges who have been belittled by the ad.

Viswanathan, an American citizen of Indian origin, was at loggerheads with the Indian government over the Antrix Devas scam.

The controversial ad was published in the Wall Street Journal on Saturday against Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and 10 other senior officials. He described these officials as making India an 'unsafe place to invest'. The ad also contained a QR code leading to the US-based Frontiers of Freedom's website. Apart from Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, Antrix Chairman Rakesh Sasibhushan, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, Additional Solicitor General N Venkataraman, Justices Hemant Gupta, V Ramasubramanian, CBI DSP Ashish Parikh, ED Director Sanjay Kumar Mishra, Deputy Director A Saddiq Muhammad, Naijnar, Assistant Director R Rajesh and Special Judge Chandrasekhar were mentioned in the advertisement.

We have asked the US government to impose economic and visa sanctions against them under the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act. The collapse of the rule of law under Modi has made India a dangerous place to invest. If you are an investor in India, you could be next,' the ad published on October 13 stated.

It is also noteworthy that the advertisement came at a time when Nirmala Sitharaman is visiting the United States to attend the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. The Finance Minister, who reached Washington on October 11, will return to India tomorrow.