Officials, diplomats, and policy planners in think tanks reacted with shock and disbelief on the arrest of Ashley Tellis, an Indian-origin former U.S. government official, who has been charged by the U.S. Department of Justice of being in possession of secret defence documents, of accessing sensitive information on military hardware, and was under surveillance over meetings with Chinese officials for at least three years. 

Mr. Tellis, 64, is a well-known figure and public speaker in foreign policy circles, and knew most officials handling the India-U.S. relationship in Delhi and Washington over the past decades, since his tenure as Special Assistant to the former U.S. Ambassador to India Robert Blackwill (2000-2003). 

The news was particularly surprising for officials of the Ministry of External Affairs, given how Mr. Tellis had what one former official called “extraordinary access” to all levels of foreign policy, defence, and national security structures 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”, said. In 2014, a 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, another book he co-edited, titled Grasping Greatness, was released 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 law pertaining to “gathering, transmitting or losing national security information, documents, codes, etc.”, a statement issued by the U.S. Attorney’s office in Virginia said on Wednesday, adding that a Federal district judge would determine his sentencing if he was convicted, with up to 10 years in prison or fines. 

The 10-page affidavit filed by Intelligence Analyst and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Special Agent Jeffery Scott on October 13 said Mr. Tellis was taken into custody on October 11, following seizures at his residence in the town of Vienna, Virginia, based on a special 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 said, and that Mr. Tellis had cooperated in directing investigators, providing keys, and unlocking his computer.

The affidavit listed four different occasions in 2022, 2023, 2024, and on September 2, 2025, when Mr. Tellis met with officials of the PRC (People’s Republic of China) at restaurants in Fairfax, Virginia, indicating Mr. Tellis has been under surveillance for at least three years. It also details Mr. Tellis’s login to a secure computer at the U.S. Department of Defense on September 12, 2025, and the printing of a number of sensitive and classified documents, including one on a U.S. fighter aircraft. As an unpaid Senior Advisor at the Department of State, and as a contractor in the Office of Net Assessment within the Department of Defense, Mr. Tellis had “Top Secret security clearance with access to Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI)”. 

The Hindu spoke to a number of experts, some whom referred to Mr. Tellis as a “close friend”, and expressed surprise over the preliminary findings of a cache of classified documents at his home outside Washington D.C. Allegations that he had been in touch with Chinese officials, including a meeting on September 15, 2022 where he is alleged to have carried documents in a “manila envelope”, and received a “red gift bag” from the officials, which are mentioned in the affidavit, have been met with particular comment, as Mr. Tellis has in articles and speeches argued for better India-U.S. relations in order to contain and manage the challenge from China. 

The Mumbai-born diplomat graduated from St. Xavier’s College and received his doctorate at the University of Chicago before 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 worked to seal the nuclear deal during former U.S. President George W. Bush’s visit to Delhi in 2006. In recent years, Mr. Tellis had written a number of pieces, some of which upset New Delhi circles, as he pushed for India to buy more defence equipment and an aircraft carrier from the U.S., suggested India abandon its “non-alignment” policy, criticised India’s “democratic decline”, and in his most recent essay, questioned the viability of India’s “great power delusions”.

The arrest explained why Mr. Tellis had “spoken so frequently and harshly” against the government, the BJP’s National Information and Technology Department in-charge Amit Malviya said, reacting to the news.

As news of the arrest came in, think tanks in the U.S. and India that had hosted Mr. Tellis as a speaker, and for research papers, deleted pages listing him as an expert. The Asia Group, which appointed him as a Special Advisor on its South Asia Team in 2020, said it had terminated his contract on Tuesday (October 14, 2025). Mr. Tellis remains the Tata Chair for Strategic Affairs and a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, which has so far not issued a statement on the issue. 

The Ministry of External Affairs did not comment on the case, and the U.S. Embassy in Delhi said it does not “comment on ongoing investigations”.

Published – October 15, 2025 07:56 pm IST

Ashley Tellis has been accused of unlawful retention of national defense information, according to an affidavit filed in court.
| Photo Credit: Special Arrangement