Recent disclosures by the US House Oversight Committee along with nearly 18,000 newly obtained Jeffrey Epstein emails reviewed by Drop Site News suggest that Epstein allegedly offered to arrange a meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and former Trump strategist Steve Bannon in mid-2019, only weeks before Epstein was arrested on child sex-trafficking charges.
These details emerged on the same day former President Donald Trump approved legislation directing the US Justice Department to release thousands of pages of long-sealed Epstein files.
The documents also reportedly indicate that Epstein maintained ties with prominent Indian political and business personalities in the years leading up to his death.
Drop Site News said the emails originated from Epstein’s Yahoo inbox.
According to their reporting, the person receiving Epstein’s 2019 messages pushing to set up a meeting with Modi is redacted in the material published by the House committee. However, the surrounding information is said to “match closely with the contemporaneous activities and locations of Steve Bannon”.
The unnamed individual referred to being in Kazakhstan, and Drop Site noted that Bannon—who chaired the advisory board of We Build The Wall in 2019—was attending a conference in Kazakhstan during the same period, the Wire reported.
Although Bannon had been fired from the White House in 2017, he reportedly remained influential in the MAGA world and continued advising the former president on strategy.
According to the Drop Site story, Bannon texted Epstein on May 23, 2019, the day Modi scored a landslide victory in the Lok Sabha elections and was re-elected as prime minister, saying that he was doing a one-hour show for India on Modi, “Bringing American Hindu guys with us." Epstein reportedly answered, "his focus wants to be on stopping China."
The next week, Bannon spoke with WION on Modi and the significance of a strong US-India partnership.
According to the report, Epstein sent more texts to Bannon urging him to overcome any impediments to meeting with Modi. While House Oversight's disclosures reveal no significant intervening correspondence between Bannon and Epstein on the matter, Epstein apparently wrote again hours later: "Modi on board." At the time of publication, neither Bannon nor Modi's office had answered Drop Site's request for comment.
Activist-lawyer Prashant Bhushan claimed that there were “many emails” exchanged between convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and Indian businessman Anil Ambani.
In a post on the social media platform X, Bhushan wrote that the two seemed to be close
"Very Interesting! So many emails between Convicted Sex trafficker & pedophile Jeffrey Epstein & our own bank fraudster Anil Ambani!" he said.
"They seem to have been thick as thieves!" Bhushan added.
The Drop Site report also refers to another set of communications, dating back to March 2017, involving an email address associated with Anil Ambani — the brother of Mukesh Ambani, Asia’s wealthiest individual. According to the report, this account was allegedly used for interactions with Epstein.
Epstein’s messages about India–Israel affairs appeared just weeks before bilateral ties reached an important milestone in July 2017, when Modi became the first Indian prime minister to visit Israel.
Around the same time, Anil Ambani’s firm, Reliance Defence Ltd, had already entered a joint venture with Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, Israel’s state-owned defence manufacturer. The partnership, finalised in 2016, involved producing air-to-air missiles and air-defence systems in a deal estimated at USD 10 billion.
Reports note that the Modi-led BJP government had quickly deepened engagement with Israel after taking office in 2014, marked by frequent high-level visits. Pranab Mukherjee’s 2015 trip, during which he also visited other countries, was the first by an Indian president to Israel.
For more than twenty years, India has remained the largest purchaser of Israeli defence equipment. Data from SIPRI indicates that New Delhi has been Israel’s biggest arms client across both the UPA and BJP-led NDA administrations.
According to Drop Site, Anil Ambani has not yet replied to its request for comment.
The outlet also stated that entries from Epstein’s private calendars showed multiple scheduled meetings with Hardeep Singh Puri, a senior figure in the BJP government.
Puri’s earliest appearance in the calendar was said to be in June 2014. That entry also included Terje Rød-Larsen — the Norwegian diplomat known for his role in the Oslo Accords, who was then the president of IPI.
Drop Site characterised Rød-Larsen as someone known to have maintained a close relationship with Epstein, and said he had been involved in initiatives attempting to negotiate a security agreement between Israel and Mongolia backed by former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak.
The Wire has reached out to Hardeep Singh Puri with questions about these claims.