On the evening of October 8, Father Stan Swamy took a break from watching TV and came down to the ground floor of Bagaicha, the Jesuit community center he founded in the eastern Indian town of Ranchi, Jharkhand. The 83-year-old priest and social activist was chatting with colleagues when an SUV pulled up outside. 

Four officers from the National Investigation Agency, India’s counter-terrorism task force, burst into the room — one of them holding a gun. Six more stood outside, and another police vehicle waited about 200 meters away. The officers spoke quietly to Swamy, seized his mobile phone and asked him to pack a bag. 

A colleague asked for an arrest warrant, but none was presented. 

The next morning, Swamy was driven to Ranchi airport and put on a two and half hour commercial flight to Mumbai, where he was remanded into custody by a special NIA court until two weeks later, on October 23. The agency filed a 17,000-page charge sheet on the same day, accusing him of links to the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist) which the Indian government views as a terrorist organization.