Fake Law Firm and Spoofed Notices: Global Journalists Targeted in Ambani’s Vantara Suppression Plot

Global Journalists Targeted in Campaign to Silence Vantara Criticism

An elaborate and dark web drive has been unearthed, and it is aimed at journalists and media houses worldwide. It was a sting operation that included forgery of legal notices and spoofed email and was planned to block critical reporting about Vantara, a large animal rescue and rehabilitation facility in Gujarat, India. It is a high profile project that is supported by the Reliance Industries and Reliance Foundation owned by Mukesh Ambani.

Indian, German, Brazilian, Czech and various African reporters and newsrooms have claimed to become targets of this intimidation move. These moves aimed at removing the critical articles off the internet. The procedure was conducted several months prior to the Indian Supreme Court giving a clean chit to Vantara on its animal purchasing methods.

The concerned articles questioned the seriousness of the operations of Vantara such as obtaining thousands of animals both locally and internationally. There were other reports such as that of an investigative article in Himal Southasian that questioned the transparency of these purchases and raised the possibility that they were providing indirect support to the illegal wildlife trade. Other international reports raised concerns about the sale of certain species of animals such as the blue macaws of Brazil, which were said to have been sold without the knowledge of Brazilian government.

This coordinated crackdown move was initiated in March 2025, when a series of damning stories were mysteriously removed off Indian news websites such as Deccan Herald and The Telegraph soon after they were published. The campaign then continued to international publications who had either covered Vantara or mentioned the initial research. This action was an indication of an obvious desire to clean up the internet of negative publicity about the project.

Simple requests were not used by the unknown people behind this plot. To enhance the credibility of their threats, they made up a big fake identity to scare off journalists and their publications into submission. This increasing pattern of takedown requests into creating complete corporate identities shows the scale to which they allowed themselves to go to control the narrative.

The Creation of a Fake Law Firm

The center of the suppression operation was a fully invented legal firm called Aspire Law Firm. This is a counterfeit company that was established on the internet with the express aim of posting intimidating legal notices to the media. The site of this non-existent company was developed in such a way that it appears to be a legitimate site, yet it was done using stolen data.

To develop a credible persona, the makers of the counterfeit company have stolen the professional biography of a known and respected Indian cyber law expert, Puneet Bhasin. Though the name was not mentioned, her full list of credentials and professional accomplishment were copied and pasted under the Aspire Law Firm tab of the “About Us” section of the site. This was so as to make the firm look credible and experts in cyber law.

Puneet Bhasin, an advocate, made a public confirmation that she has no relation to this bogus company or the notices that are being circulated in their name. She claimed that she had not given consent to the use of her professional credentials. The names of ten actual lawyers were also given on the site, all of whom were actually employed in a legal firm in Canada called YLaw, which was a legitimate firm further contributing to the deception.

With this misleading name, the name Aspire Law Firm started sending almost identical legal notices to different media houses in July 2025. These advertisements argued that the articles that were critical of Vantara were defamatory and had unverified claims. The emails required the publications to take down the stories altogether or revise the stories such that they could say that the allegations were not proven, and usually within 48 hours of doing so.

A phantom company that purported its office to be in Delhi was a major weapon in this intimidation campaign. By impersonating a genuine legal entity, the operators wanted to intimidate the publications into self-censorship in the event of an expensive and lengthy legal tussle. Aspire Law Firm has since removed the site.

Spoofed Emails and Impersonation Tactics

The fabrication of the bogus law firm was not the only deceptive strategy applied. There was also the use of impersonation of Google executives in the campaign. At least 3 media outlets, Africa Geographic, iRozhlas and Conexao Planeta, were issued with takedown demands by an email address that was faked to appear to be sent by Google Legal Support.

These are the emails which were spoofed, similar to the bogus law firm and asked it to remove or modify the articles, claiming defamation. The fact that Google name was used was simply an effort to put an extra pressure that the largest search engine in the world was also analyzing the content. Google Brazil however, later came out to confirm that the email message by Google Legal Support was not genuine and was not sent by the company.

A single mail to Africa Geographic was signed by an individual who was pretending to be called Jim and said that the article in the publication was defamatory. The email demanded the story to be revised to focus on the fact that the charges against Vantara had not been proven. This push and pull campaign, which the supposed law firm, as well as a fake Google executive, put him under, was a multi-front.

The tactics are also usually related to Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation, or SLAPP suits. Such actions are not always aimed at winning a case, but they tend to threaten and silence the opponents by exhausting their finances and legal expertise. In this instance, the offenders fabricated false entities to obtain the same chilling effect without necessarily having to go to court and pursue an actual lawsuit.

The fact that the attacks were coordinated and aimed at different publications in various countries with the same demands speaks of a well coordinated operation. It was more of a conspiracy to hide certain information that was not supposed to go to the masses. The campaign was aimed at establishing a media blockade against any decision by the media that opposed the proceedings of the flagship project Vantara.

A Fight for Press Freedom

This censorship campaign has been severely criticized by press freedom activists and journalists as a direct assault to free press media. Media houses such as the Himal Southasian have been the loudest in their disapproval. Actually the parent entities of Vantara had filed a real contempt of court case against Himal in the Delhi High court in 2011 claiming the magazine had failed to follow a court order.