Claim: Bahrain’s interior ministry has confirmed the arrest of an Indian spy, an engineer, according to certain reports, who was working for Israel’s Mossad, and is likely to be given the death penalty.
Fact: Bahrain’s interior ministry has not confirmed any arrests of Indian nationals for spying in Bahrain.
On 10 March 2026, the Facebook page WE News English posted (archive) an image of a man under arrest. The post is captioned, “Authorities in Bahrain detained Nitin Mohan, an Indian telecommunications engineer, accused of transmitting sensitive data to Israel’s intelligence agency Mossad.” It added that “Bahrain’s Interior Ministry confirmed the arrest but has not released further investigative details.”
The Facebook post by WE News English also included an image of the alleged Indian national who was allegedly arrested.
Fact or Fiction?
A keyword search conducted by Soch Fact Check did not lead to any credible official statements by the Interior Ministry of Bahrain about the arrest of an Indian national for espionage in Bahrain. However, the search did reveal a press release posted by the Bahrain Police Media Centre on 9 March 2026, stating that six Asian nationals had been arrested for filming and sharing videos that glorified Iranian aggression and could disturb public order. Soch Fact Check further combed through press releases posted by the Bahrain Police Media Centre but found no releases with mentions of arresting an Indian spy.
News of this arrest was corroborated by multiple news outlets, including the Gulf Daily News and Kuwait-based Arab Times, which provided additional details on the arrests of the six Asian nationals. With the Gulf Daily News posting on 9 March that “The Interior Ministry has announced that the anti-cybercrime department at the General Directorate of Anti-Corruption and Economic and Electronic Security has identified and arrested six individuals of Asian nationalities for filming, publishing, or republishing videos related to the effects of Iranian aggression, expressing sympathy for it, and glorifying these hostile acts.” However, none of these reports makes mention of an Indian national arrested for spying.
Notably, since the beginning of the conflict between Iran and the Gulf States, Bahrain has cracked down on social media users who have posted about the conflict, with some detainees facing the death penalty. Authorities have arrested dozens of people for participating in peaceful demonstrations mourning the death of Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran’s former Supreme Leader, for protesting US and Israeli attacks in Iran, or for sharing footage of the attacks on social media, as reported by the Bahrain Center for Human Rights. As Niku Jafarnia, Yemen and Bahrain researcher at Human Rights Watch, stated, “At this critical moment, Bahrain authorities should be expanding their efforts to protect people, not arresting them for peacefully demonstrating or posting on social media. Bahraini authorities should stop detaining people, unconditionally release all those arbitrarily detained, and temporarily release others on humanitarian grounds.”
Additionally, our search revealed a press release by the Bahrain Police Media Centre stating that four Bahraini nationals had been arrested on espionage charges, including collecting and passing sensitive information to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The statement also noted that a fifth suspect was at large abroad. According to The Jerusalem Post, the suspects were not only accused of passing sensitive information to Iran but also of “recruiting terrorist operatives to take part in carrying out terrorist plots against Bahrain.”
The release listed the individuals as Abbas Abdullah Habib, 39; Yousef Ahmed Mansour Sarhan, 25; Mohammed Fadl Hamid, 39; Sahlan Abdul Reda Ali, 27; Mohammed Hadi Hassan, 37; and Ahmed Yousef Jassim Sarhan, 37, who is outside the country. Importantly, the suspects were identified as Bahraini rather than Indian, and the name Nithin Mohan does not appear among them.
Further review of press releases published by the Bahrain Police Media Centre did not yield any statement mentioning the arrest of an Indian spy.
Soch Fact Check also investigated the viral image of the arrested Indian national. A reverse-image search found a similar image depicting the arrest of someone in Bahrain for drug possession in February 2025, as reported by the prominent Bahraini news outlet Al-Bilad Press. In the original image, signage beneath the “Kingdom of Bahrain Ministry of Interior General Directorate of Criminal Investigation and Forensic Science” label also included the title “Anti Narcotics Directorate.” This detail reflects standard Bahraini departmental labeling practices and is notably absent from the viral image, raising further doubts about its authenticity. Additionally, the man photographed in the viral image has odd shadowing behind him and looks as if he was photoshopped into the image.
Image 1: Original Image of a man arrested for narcotics possession from the 2025 Al-Bilad report.
Image 2: Viral Image of an arrested Indian spy.
Finally, the Indian Ministry of External Affairs’ official fact-check account also issued a statement on 10 March 2026, declaring the claim of an Indian national’s arrest in Bahrain for spying as “false and baseless.”
Virality
Soch Fact Check found the same claim had been shared on Facebook here, here, and here.
And on X here, here, and here.
Conclusion:
Conclusion: There are no credible reports to support the claim that Bahrain’s authorities arrested an Indian citizen for spying. Additionally, Bahrain’s interior ministry has also not confirmed the arrest of an Indian citizen for spying. The image in the claim is also likely doctored.