Rana Ayyub is an Indian investigative journalist and a global opinions writer at the Washington Post. She has worked as a reporter, editor and columnist with some of the leading publications in India and internationally. Her pieces appear in the Time, New York Times, Guardian, Atlantic and Foreign Policy among other publications.

Rana has reported extensively on majoritarian politics and violence, extrajudicial killings by the state, Islamophobia, communalism and authored an international bestseller titled “Gujarat Files: Anatomy of a Cover-Up’, an undercover investigation on the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and communal violence under his rule.

Rana’s work is focused on the marginalised and the oppressed, she routinely speaks and reports about the fight against misinformation and the protection of democratic ideas. It is for this work that she has faced extreme forms of persecution by the Indian government which includes filing multiple cases for which she is facing trial in India. A recent study by the International Centre for Journalists called her one of the most abused and trolled journalists who is the victim of the worst kind of online harassment meant to discredit her work and reputation. The ICFJ study concludes that Rana is targeted online every 14 seconds. 

In a career spanning fifteen years, Rana has been awarded the Sanskriti award for integrity and excellence in journalism by the former President of India. She was the recipient of the Global Shining Light award for Investigative journalism in the year 2017 and the Most Resilient Global Journalist of 2018 at the Peace Palace in Hague. In 2019, she was named among ten global journalists who faced maximum threats to their lives across the world. In the year, 2018 The United Nations allotted six special rapporteurs to the Indian government to protect her safety, a first for an individual case in India.

In 2020, she was announced as the recipient of the McMgill medal for journalistic courage. In 2022, she was awarded the Overseas Press Club Award for her incisive commentary on India and the same year she was awarded the John Aubuchon press freedom honour, the highest journalism award by the Press Club in the United States. She lives in Mumbai with her family