A division of India’s Ministry of Finance has raided the homes and offices of leading climate activists on allegations that their campaign work against fossil fuels poses a risk to the country’s energy security, and briefly arrested one of them.

The ministry’s Enforcement Directorate searched the Delhi home and offices of Harjeet Singh and his partner Jyoti Awasthi, co-founders of Satat Sampada Private Limited (SSPL) and Satat Sampada Climate Foundation, “on suspicion of using foreign funds to campaign against fossil fuel production and therefore, they argue, India’s energy security,” Climate Home News reports. “They seem to have found nothing to substantiate these allegations and could only arrest Singh on suspicion of an unrelated and minor offence, of allegedly having too much whiskey in his house.”

Singh, a veteran climate campaigner and advisor to the Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative (FFTI), “is a familiar figure at COP climate negotiations, having worked for more than two decades with international NGOs and climate campaigns including ActionAid and the Climate Action Network,” the Guardian writes.

The Hindustan Times says the ministry also searched the home of Sanjay Vashisht, director of Climate Action Network South Asia (CANSA).

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) is a specialized law enforcement agency under the finance ministry’s revenue department that oversees laws on foreign exchange management and prevention of money laundering. In a release [pdf] Tuesday, the agency said it was looking into “suspicious foreign inward remittances” totalling Rs. 6 Crore (about C$925,000) to SSPL between 2021 and 2025.

Those funds consisted of consulting fees from activist groups like Climate Action Network and Stand.Earth. But the ministry is interpreting the payments as “channelling foreign funds to run narratives” to further the non-proliferation treaty “on behalf of foreign influencer groups.” It said those groups “have in turn received huge funds from prior reference category NGOs like Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors.”

The release described the Treaty Initiative (FFTI) as “a proposed international treaty aiming to phase out fossil fuel production. While presented as a climate initiative, its adoption could expose India to legal challenges in international forums like the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and severely compromise the nation’s energy security and economic development.”

The Indian Express notes that the non-proliferation treaty “is, in fact, an idea promoted mainly by civil society groups to establish an international treaty to stop the expansion of the use of fossil fuels that are the prime reason for global warming. The idea draws its inspiration from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.”

“There is “no formal proposal for FF-NPT under discussion at an official level, and no country has ever proposed such a treaty at any climate meeting,” the publication adds.

The ED, which is also investigating Singh’s travel to an event in Pakistan and a lecture in Bangladesh, said it found a “large cache of Indian and foreign-made liquor, beyond the permissible limits” in his home, leading to his arrest by the State Excise Department of Utter Pradesh.

An unidentified ED officer told the Hindustan Times that the agency “received intelligence around the COP30 [last year’s United Nations climate summit in Brazil] that some climate activists were campaigning against fossil fuels at the behest of some foreign organizations…This is when we decided to look at his foreign funding.” Another officer said the ED is looking into “similar activists or organizations whose climate campaigns may be inimical to India’s energy security.”

In a statement, Singh and Aswati said they couldn’t share details of the case for legal reasons, but “we categorically state that the allegations being reported are baseless, biased, and misleading.”

The Guardian writes that “civil society organizations in India under [Prime Minister] Narendra Modi have faced severe pressures. Almost 17,000 licences to receive foreign funding have been suspended and a large number of civil society organizations have shut down.” In their statement, Singh and Aswati said they “fully cooperated and provided all relevant information and documentary evidence,” expressed their “faith in due process and the rule of law,” and urged media organizations to “report responsibly and avoid speculation.”

In its own statement Tuesday, the Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative stressed that its work “consists of building mechanisms for just, orderly and equitable energy transitions, and to that end supporting countries, particularly developing and vulnerable nations, in moving towards more secure and accessible energy systems.” Global Director Alex Rafalowicz did not comment on the specifics of the case but said the FFTI was “awaiting the outcome of the investigation”.

FFTI Founder and Chair Tzeporah Berman added that the treaty initiative recognizes the need for “different pathways and timelines towards a global just transition to phase out fossil fuels. The proposal intends to support developing countries—including India—through international cooperation, economic diversification, access to finance, and technology transfer.”