Officials, diplomats, and coverage planners in assume tanks reacted with shock and disbelief on the arrest of Ashley Tellis, an Indian-origin former U.S. authorities official, who has been charged by the U.S. Department of Justice of being in possession of secret defence paperwork, of accessing delicate data on army {hardware}, and was below surveillance over conferences with Chinese officers for not less than three years.
Mr. Tellis, 64, is a well-known figure and public speaker in overseas coverage circles, and knew most officers dealing with the India-U.S. relationship in Delhi and Washington over the previous a long time, since his tenure as Special Assistant to the former U.S. Ambassador to India Robert Blackwill (2000-2003).
The information was significantly stunning for officers of the Ministry of External Affairs, given how Mr. Tellis had what one former official referred to as “extraordinary access” to all ranges of overseas coverage, defence, and nationwide safety constructions in New Delhi.
“Ashley was among the few foreigners who had an equally good equation with both (the late former) Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Prime Minister Narendra Modi,“ a former official, who called Mr. Tellis a “highly regarded scholar”, mentioned. In 2014, a e-book co-edited by Mr. Tellis, titled Getting India Back on Track: An Action Agenda for Reform, was launched by Mr. Modi at his residence, and in 2022, one other e-book he co-edited, titled Grasping Greatness, was launched by External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar.
Over the weekend, Mr. Tellis was arrested for the “unlawful retention of national defense information, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 793(e)”, a legislation pertaining to “gathering, transmitting or losing national security information, documents, codes, etc.”, a assertion issued by the U.S. Attorney’s workplace in Virginia mentioned on Wednesday, including that a Federal district decide would decide his sentencing if he was convicted, with as much as 10 years in jail or fines.
The 10-page affidavit filed by Intelligence Analyst and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Special Agent Jeffery Scott on October 13 mentioned Mr. Tellis was taken into custody on October 11, following seizures at his residence in the city of Vienna, Virginia, based mostly on a particular warrant.
“Investigators located over a thousand pages of paper documents with classification markings at the TOP SECRET and/or SECRET levels at various locations within the house”, the affidavit mentioned, and that Mr. Tellis had cooperated in directing investigators, offering keys, and unlocking his laptop.
The affidavit listed 4 completely different events in 2022, 2023, 2024, and on September 2, 2025, when Mr. Tellis met with officers of the PRC (People’s Republic of China) at eating places in Fairfax, Virginia, indicating Mr. Tellis has been below surveillance for not less than three years. It additionally particulars Mr. Tellis’s login to a safe laptop at the U.S. Department of Defense on September 12, 2025, and the printing of a variety of delicate and categorized paperwork, together with one on a U.S. fighter plane. As an unpaid Senior Advisor at the Department of State, and as a contractor in the Office of Net Assessment inside the Department of Defense, Mr. Tellis had “Top Secret security clearance with access to Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI)”.
The Hindu spoke to a variety of consultants, some whom referred to Mr. Tellis as a “close friend”, and expressed shock over the preliminary findings of a cache of categorized paperwork at his house exterior Washington D.C. Allegations that he had been in contact with Chinese officers, together with a assembly on September 15, 2022 the place he’s alleged to have carried paperwork in a “manila envelope”, and obtained a “red gift bag” from the officers, that are talked about in the affidavit, have been met with specific remark, as Mr. Tellis has in articles and speeches argued for higher India-U.S. relations in order to include and handle the problem from China.
The Mumbai-born diplomat graduated from St. Xavier’s College and obtained his doctorate at the University of Chicago earlier than he was picked by Mr. Blackwill as a Special Assistant. Former associates at the U.S. Embassy in Delhi at the time recall Mr. Tellis, who was subsequently the Senior Advisor to Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, R. Nicholas Burns, had labored to seal the nuclear deal throughout former U.S. President George W. Bush’s go to to Delhi in 2006. In current years, Mr. Tellis had written a variety of items, a few of which upset New Delhi circles, as he pushed for India to purchase extra defence tools and an plane provider from the U.S., urged India abandon its “non-alignment” coverage, criticised India’s “democratic decline”, and in his most up-to-date essay, questioned the viability of India’s “great power delusions”.
The arrest defined why Mr. Tellis had “spoken so frequently and harshly” towards the authorities, the BJP’s National Information and Technology Department in-charge Amit Malviya mentioned, reacting to the information.
As information of the arrest got here in, assume tanks in the U.S. and India that had hosted Mr. Tellis as a speaker, and for analysis papers, deleted pages itemizing him as an professional. The Asia Group, which appointed him as a Special Advisor on its South Asia Team in 2020, mentioned it had terminated his contract on Tuesday (October 14, 2025). Mr. Tellis stays the Tata Chair for Strategic Affairs and a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, which has up to now not issued a assertion on the situation.
The Ministry of External Affairs didn’t remark on the case, and the U.S. Embassy in Delhi mentioned it doesn’t “comment on ongoing investigations”.
