India has strongly rejected a recommendation by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) to impose sanctions on its external intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), calling the report "biased" and "politically motivated."

In its 2025 annual report released on Tuesday, USCIRF accused RAW of "serious violations of religious freedom" and urged the US government to consider sanctions. The Indian Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) responded sharply on Wednesday, dismissing the allegations and branding USCIRF as an "entity of concern" for its "misleading and agenda-driven" assessments.

MEA spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal stated that the commission’s report followed a "pattern of prejudiced and distorted narratives," effectively dismissing it as unreliable. While not directly using the term "fake," the Indian government implied that the report lacked credibility.

The USCIRF report revisited allegations from 2023 linking an RAW officer and six Indian diplomats to an alleged assassination plot against a Sikh American citizen in New York. The MEA countered by accusing USCIRF of selectively highlighting isolated incidents to undermine India’s pluralistic society.

"USCIRF’s repeated misrepresentation of facts and attempts to question India’s vibrant, multi-religious democracy expose its lack of genuine concern for religious freedom—it’s clearly a deliberate design," the statement read.

India further asserted that the commission has consistently ignored the country’s long-standing tradition of interfaith harmony. "With 1.4 billion people practicing nearly every major religion in the world, India’s pluralistic ethos and peaceful coexistence need no validation from a biased body like USCIRF," the MEA added.

The government’s rebuttal signals escalating tensions over external scrutiny of India’s internal affairs, with New Delhi firmly rejecting what it sees as foreign interference.