Manisha Ganguly (born 13 January 1995) is an investigations correspondent at The Guardian, specialising in Open Source intelligence to expose war crimes. She previously worked as investigative documentary producer for the BBC, where she received multiple awards for her work investigating human rights abuses internationally. She lives in London, United Kingdom.
Early career
While living in Kolkata, India, Ganguly was recruited into journalism when she was in high school by the national newspaper in India The Times of India after winning a national writing competition.
After the 2012 Delhi gang rape and murder, Ganguly began reporting on violence against women and was subject to rape and death threats online. She was the founder and editor of feminist counterculture webzine, Eyezine, which consisted of mostly women reporting on violence against women. The website was central to documenting the campus rape which sparked the 2014 Jadavpur University protests. Its investigation into subsequent riot police assault against students sparked mass protests and shut down the city, and resulted in more than 100,000 readers in one month for the website. The webzine also came under attack from the state for reporting on human rights abuses in the Kashmir conflict.
Recent work
Ganguly received a full scholarship to study a Master's in journalism at the University of Westminster in London, and moved to the United Kingdom. She considers India to be a hostile environment for women in journalism.
For the BBC, her investigative documentaries exposed double-tap attacks by Russian planes in Syria and war crimes by Turkish-backed forces in the Syrian civil war, foreign meddling, violations of the UN arms embargo, desecration of the bodies of prisoners of war and civilians in Libya, use of cluster munitions in Ukraine, human trafficking in the Middle East, uncovered the training of the killers of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, discovered China's most famous MeToo activist who had been missing. In 2022, Ganguly's investigation documented the torture of Russian anti-war prisoners in a Moscow police station and the identities of the officers, which resulted in the officers being sanctioned by the EU.
Ganguly was interviewed about her investigative reporting on Ukraine by Bellingcat, El Mundo, ARTE, L'Orient Le Jour, Marie Claire.
She holds a PhD titled "Future of Investigative Journalism: The Age of Automation, A.I. & Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT)" from the University of Westminster. It is the first PhD in OSINT mapping the impact on investigative journalism. Ganguly's research also focussed on incidences of PTSD and the mental health impact of looking at graphic violence in OSINT investigations in war zones. She is a vocal proponent of women's representation and diversity in the OSINT space and investigative journalism.
In 2023, following the Twitter takeover by Elon Musk and banning of ElonJet, Ganguly expressed concern for Twitter becoming "an inhospitable platform for the OSINT community". Ganguly also criticised the verification of the account of assassinated journalist Jamal Khashoggi by Musk for Twitter Blue, tweeting: “Jamal Khashoggi deserves better".
Ganguly investigated Team Jorge, a team of Israeli contractors led by Tal Hanan, claiming to have meddled in more 30 elections worldwide and Aims, their software to launch bot armies with the Guardian and Forbidden Stories. It resulted in the suspension of French broadcaster Rachid M'Barki of BFMTV.
She investigated NTC-Vulkan, which develops a Russian disinformation network and cyberweapons used by the Russian military and intelligence agencies as a part of the Vulkan Files. Ganguly acquired the Pentagon Leaks from Discord for the Guardian, and reported that half the special forces deployments in Ukraine consisted of UK special forces. Ganguly investigated the lineage of colonial looting of jewellery in the royal collection owned by Elizabeth II, and the British royal family. Ganguly exposed the US and Germany training of Saudi border forces accused of mass killing migrants on the Yemen border.
Ganguly has reported on transnational repression of dissidents on European soil, focussing on Saudi Arabia and Iran.