• Rohit Sohanlal (Author)

Editorial / Legal Note: This article discusses allegations contained in an ongoing civil action and the author’s reported experiences. References to police, RCMP personnel, surveillance, technological interference, harassment, impersonation, torture, or coordinated conduct are allegations and accounts that have not been adjudicated or independently established as facts. The identity and authority of certain persons described in the civil claim remain unknown and are expressly pleaded as matters requiring investigation, disclosure and discovery. Nothing in this article should be understood as a finding that any particular person, police service, government agency, or other institution committed the alleged conduct. The purpose of this article is to document the allegations, explain their impact, and place the underlying questions of identity, authority, technology and accountability into the public discussion.

There is a difference between being followed in a street and believing that you are being followed everywhere.

There is a difference between being harassed by a stranger and believing that the harassment can enter your home.

There is a difference between fearing a person and fearing an institution.

And there is something particularly disturbing about believing that the people behind the harassment either possess, claim to possess, or appear to possess the authority of the police or the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

That is the territory of my civil lawsuit.

For years, I have tried to describe what happened to me in Toronto and elsewhere in Ontario. The easiest description is “harassment,” but that word does not adequately capture what I experienced or what I have pleaded before the Ontario Superior Court of Justice.

My claim describes an alleged course of conduct involving auditory intrusion, perceived monitoring, privacy violations, intimidation, sexualized harassment, alleged technology-facilitated battery, interference with housing and employment, vehicles appearing in proximity to incidents, repeated police or RCMP representations, institutional failures and continuing disruption of ordinary life. The people I have identified collectively in the pleading as the “Broadcaster Group” are presently unidentified. According to the claim, these individuals repeatedly represented, claimed, purported or appeared to possess Police or RCMP authority; alternatively, the pleading alleges that they may have been falsely representing such authority.

These are allegations, not findings of fact.

That distinction matters.

But so does the other distinction: an allegation does not become meaningless merely because it has not yet been adjudicated.

The whole point of litigation is to determine what happened.

Toronto has already heard a story about what policing can do to a person’s sense of freedom

In 2015, Desmond Cole published an extraordinary first-person account in Toronto Life entitled The Skin I’m In: I’ve been interrogated by police more than 50 times—all because I’m black.

Cole described repeatedly being stopped, questioned and followed by police in Toronto, Kingston and southern Ontario. He wrote about police cruisers appearing behind him, being stopped while walking, and gradually developing an expectation that police scrutiny could happen anywhere. He eventually described himself as a prisoner in his own city.

One passage is particularly relevant to the experience I am describing.

Cole recalled noticing police cars behind him while driving at Queen’s and deliberately taking different routes to see whether the pattern continued. He eventually began driving aimlessly because he feared that going home would allow the police to discover where he lived and follow him there.

That is what prolonged surveillance does to a person’s relationship with geography.

A street stops being merely a street.

A police cruiser stops being merely a vehicle.

A rear-view mirror becomes a source of information about whether you are safe.

My experience is factually different from Cole’s. His account is explicitly situated in racialized policing and carding. My lawsuit concerns allegations of a much different and technologically oriented pattern of harassment, including alleged actors presenting themselves as police or RCMP personnel.

But there is a common psychological consequence:

the loss of ordinary freedom of movement.

In my case, the problem allegedly followed me home

The most serious part of my story is not what happened on a street.

It is what I say happened inside places where I was supposed to be able to close the door.

My civil claim describes alleged recurring auditory intrusion and perceived monitoring across multiple residences. It pleads that these experiences were not confined to public spaces but occurred in bedrooms, washrooms, kitchens and other areas where a person ordinarily has the highest expectation of privacy. The pleading specifically describes perceived monitoring of private activities, communications and bodily activity.

The claim describes incidents beginning in 2024 in which I reported recurring auditory disturbances in residential premises and perceived private information being communicated to other people.

It became increasingly sexualized.

It became increasingly intrusive.

And, according to the pleading, it became increasingly difficult to escape.

At 181 Barrington Avenue, my claim describes recurrent auditory disturbances and an escalation into sexualized commentary allegedly directed at me inside my bedroom.

At 372 Atlas Avenue, the claim describes what I experienced as continuous acoustic intrusion within the residence, private activity allegedly being referenced in real time, and subsequent incidents involving physical assault and alleged technology-facilitated interference.

At 6030 Bathurst Street, the claim describes perceived projected audio within the bedroom and commentary that I understood as referring to movements, private communications, an email and financial information. It further alleges that persons associated with the Broadcaster Group claimed to be Police or RCMP personnel.

At 87 Scepter Place in Whitby, the claim describes alleged technology-facilitated physical impacts, persistent localized sensations, disruption of sleep and alleged sexualized incidents, including an occurrence reported to Durham Regional Police.

At 931 Liverpool Road in Pickering, the claim describes an alleged near-daily pattern of continuous auditory disturbance, sexualized humiliation and interference with private activity in the bedroom, washroom and kitchen, including surrounding exterior areas.

This is what makes the allegation qualitatively different from ordinary street harassment.

The alleged harassment was not merely around me. It was allegedly inside the household.

A home is supposed to be the last line of privacy

Most people take privacy for granted because they have never had to think about its architecture.

Close the door.

Pull the blinds.

Go into the bathroom.

Turn off the phone.

Sit on the bed.

Talk to someone privately.

Write something down.

Think.

Rest.

Those actions constitute ordinary private life.

My claim alleges that these ordinary boundaries repeatedly failed.

The pleading describes concerns about private internet searches, document drafting, journal entries, private conversations, communications with government agencies and Landlord and Tenant Board correspondence being followed by what I experienced as contemporaneous or nearly contemporaneous auditory commentary.

The claim also describes an alleged incident in which I entered a credit-card PIN at an RBC branch and perceived the same information being repeated aloud. Later, the pleading describes alleged repetition of private financial information within my residence and nearby commercial areas.

Whether those allegations can ultimately be proved is a matter for evidence.

But imagine the psychological consequence if you genuinely believed them to be happening.

You would stop treating your home as private.

You would start questioning whether your devices were private.

You would wonder whether the walls were private.

You would wonder whether the window was private.

You would wonder whether the car parked outside mattered.

You would wonder who knew what.

You would wonder how they knew it.

You would start changing your behaviour because you no longer knew which behaviours were actually private.

That is a form of psychological confinement.

My claim expressly uses the term “psychological confinement” to describe circumstances experienced by me as materially impairing privacy, freedom of movement and psychological security.

The vehicle became part of the alleged architecture

Vehicles occupy an unusual role in this story.

They are ordinary enough that nobody notices them unless they have a reason to.

But my claim alleges repeated temporal proximity between vehicles and the auditory disturbances I was reporting.

The pleading expressly describes a recurring pattern in which auditory events occurred in proximity to vehicles in my immediate vicinity and states that this became pervasive in public spaces from early 2024 onward.

On June 17, 2024, the claim alleges that, after I had sent emails to institutional recipients and an officer, I saw a vehicle stop nearby and perceived two distinct projected voices making coordinated statements concerning people known to me.

On June 20, the claim describes alleged derogatory and sexually humiliating commentary projected through an automobile near an intersection while I was inside my residence.

The claim later describes another disturbing incident at Toronto Police Service 43 Division. I had gone there seeking refuge and spoke to officers about confidential information. The pleading alleges that shortly after I left the station, information discussed inside was perceived as being repeated from vehicles outside. The police communications operator, according to the pleading, told me that the activity could involve “unmarked police vehicles.”

Again: that statement is recorded in my pleading as part of my account. It is not a judicial finding that an unmarked police vehicle was actually involved.

That is precisely why evidence matters.

But from a human perspective, consider the resulting problem.

If every suspicious vehicle is ignored, you may miss the one that matters.

If every vehicle is treated as evidence of surveillance, you can lose the ability to distinguish ordinary life from danger.

That is an impossible position for a person to live in indefinitely.

The alleged technology is what makes the experience fundamentally different

One of the most important aspects of my claim is that the alleged conduct is not described as ordinary verbal harassment.

The pleading describes alleged technology-facilitated conduct, including recurring auditory disturbances, alleged interception and rebroadcasting of private information, alleged acoustic or directed physical effects, and what I experienced as localized bodily sensations.

The claim states that I am aware of the general nature and methodology of the technology I believe was involved, but that I do not presently possess the specific hardware, software, configuration or operational details. The pleading expressly states that these technical details remain within the knowledge or control of the defendants and persons alleged to have coordinated with them.

That is an important legal distinction.

I am not claiming that I presently possess a complete technical schematic identifying every component.

I am saying that the allegations involve technology that, if it exists and was used as alleged, would require investigation, attribution and technical evidence.

The claim goes further. It describes alleged capture and external rebroadcasting of private vocalizations, including very low-volume sounds, and records my attempts to test what I perceived as the system’s capabilities.

The pleading also describes alleged incidents involving highly localized physical sensations and what I characterize as technology-facilitated battery and sexual battery.

And in one section, the claim expressly characterizes the alleged conduct as including psychological torture, technology-facilitated battery and sexual battery, together with alleged use of police or RCMP authority—or alleged impersonation of it—to create coercion and psychological terror.

Those are serious allegations.

They should be treated as serious allegations.

“Torture” is not a word I use casually

In everyday conversation, people use the word “torture” too casually.

I do not.

My claim uses the term deliberately because the alleged conduct, as I experienced it, was not a single unpleasant event. It was described as systematic, repetitive and difficult to escape.

The pleading specifically alleges “psychological torture” and describes a methodology involving recurring threats, technological surveillance, alleged bodily interference, intimidation and the severing of access to basic aspects of life such as shelter, income and social support.

The significance is cumulative.

One incident can be endured.

A continuing series of incidents begins to change behaviour.

Eventually, the person does not merely react to individual incidents.

The person starts reorganizing their entire existence around anticipated incidents.

Where can I sleep?

Where can I work?

Where can I sit?

Should I use public transit?

Should I go into that store?

Should I contact the police?

Should I send this email?

Should I write this document?

Should I leave the apartment?

Should I go back?

Should I move?

Should I leave the country?

That is how alleged harassment becomes alleged psychological confinement.

The asymmetry of resources is terrifying

There is another feature that I want to emphasize because it is rarely discussed.

The person being harassed has finite resources.

One person has limited money.

Limited technology.

Limited investigative capacity.

Limited access to forensic expertise.

Limited access to lawyers.

Limited access to institutional records.

Limited ability to compel evidence.

Meanwhile, if the allegations are correct, an organized actor with access to specialized technical infrastructure could operate at an entirely different level.

I cannot presently tell the Court, or the public, what the alleged actors’ budget is.

I cannot honestly say that anyone possesses an literally unlimited budget.

But from the perspective of someone experiencing what I have reported, the apparent technological and organizational asymmetry can feel effectively limitless.

My pleading identifies not merely ordinary consumer technology but alleged “highly restricted systems and infrastructure,” specialized technical systems, equipment, private contractors, software developers and hardware providers as possible sources of the technology described.

The claim further alleges that technological and operational facilitators—including private contractors, software developers and hardware providers—may have supplied technical infrastructure, specialized systems or equipment capable of facilitating the alleged surveillance, acoustic harassment and technological interference.

If that allegation is ultimately substantiated, it changes the character of the problem entirely.

A single individual with a microphone is one thing.

A person with sophisticated technical infrastructure, information access, logistical assistance and institutional knowledge is something else entirely.

That possibility is one reason why identifying the actors and the technology matters so much.

And then there is the police problem

The obvious response to harassment is:

Call the police.

I did.

The claim records repeated efforts to report the conduct to police, RCMP-related channels, cybercrime reporting systems and other government institutions.

At one point, the claim says, I even attempted to obtain a peace bond, but the effort was unsuccessful in part because the alleged broadcasters remained unidentified. The pleading records that Durham officers likewise stated that they did not yet know the identities of the people allegedly responsible.

That produces a vicious procedural circle.

You cannot restrain the person because you cannot identify the person.

You cannot identify the person because you do not have the records.

You cannot obtain the records without an investigation or disclosure.

And meanwhile the alleged conduct continues.

My lawsuit therefore asks not merely for compensation but for disclosure, identification, injunctions and other forms of judicial relief.

The claim expressly identifies the unknown Broadcaster Group and associated John Doe defendants as people whose identities, affiliations and roles remain to be determined through investigation and discovery.

That is not an attempt to substitute a lawsuit for a criminal investigation.

It is, in part, an attempt to obtain the information necessary to understand who is actually involved.

What happens when the alleged harassment intersects with housing?

The consequences were not confined to fear.

Housing became unstable.

The claim describes multiple residences, repeated displacement and incidents occurring in or around those residences.

At one point, after police attended a residence following my requests for assistance, I was told I had to leave at the landlord’s request and was compelled to exit the next morning without receiving a refund for the unused portion of the tenancy. The pleading then records the theft of my second eBike shortly afterward, following the theft of the first eBike within the preceding thirty-day period. Both thefts were reported to Toronto Police.

The significance of the eBikes was economic as well as practical.

The claim identifies them as essential operational assets that I relied upon to generate gig-economy income.

This illustrates the compounding effect.

Harassment affects sleep.

Poor sleep affects work.

Lost work affects income.

Lost income affects housing.

Housing instability increases vulnerability.

Vulnerability makes harassment harder to escape.

The resulting financial pressure reduces the person’s ability to hire professional assistance.

And the cycle continues.

The alleged harassment did not stop at home

Public transit was also part of the chronology pleaded in the claim.

The pleading describes incidents involving the TTC, Durham Region Transit and GO Transit. It records complaints concerning alleged auditory “broadcasting,” alleged dissemination of personal information and incidents in which commentary appeared, from my perspective, to correspond with things I was observing or doing.

That means there was allegedly no reliable boundary between private and public life.

Bedroom.

Washroom.

Kitchen.

Street.

Vehicle.

Bus.

Train.

Coffee shop.

Classroom.

Police station.

Court-related activity.

The claim describes the conduct as occurring across residential, commercial, institutional, transit and public environments.

That is why I have described the experience as relentless.

The problem was not merely that something happened.

The problem was that I could not reliably identify where it would stop.

The alleged connection to police authority made everything worse

Imagine receiving harassment and hearing people claim that they are police.

Then imagine reporting the conduct to police.

Then imagine hearing people whom you associate with the harassment discussing your police reports.

Then imagine being told things about court proceedings or reporting attempts that you had not publicly disclosed.

My claim alleges precisely this kind of chronology.

It says that people associated with the Broadcaster Group repeatedly appeared aware of or responded to reporting, complaints, litigation activities and court filings. It gives examples involving alleged knowledge of an urgent motion, Rule 2.1 proceedings and attempted police reports.

In one pleaded example, people associated with the Broadcaster Group allegedly told me in advance that Toronto Police would not accept online reports. The pleading says that I subsequently attempted to make those reports and received rejection notices.

Again, coincidence is possible.

Misunderstanding is possible.

Information leakage through ordinary channels is possible.

And those are precisely the questions that evidence should answer.

But the alleged pattern was sufficiently disturbing that I placed it before a court.

A statement of claim is not a verdict

This distinction should remain visible throughout any public discussion of the case.

My civil claim is my pleading.

It tells the court what I allege happened.

It identifies the people and institutions I say may have responsibility.

It identifies causes of action and legal theories.

It asks for damages and other relief.

It does not establish that every allegation is true.

That determination belongs to the judicial process.

The claim itself acknowledges that certain identities, affiliations, technology and operational relationships remain uncertain and require disclosure, discovery and investigation.

That is why I am not asking readers to replace a court.

I am asking readers to understand why a person might eventually resort to civil litigation after repeatedly reporting conduct and failing to obtain the clarity or protection they were seeking.

What I want investigated is not mysterious

At the end of the day, the questions are concrete.

Who were the people?

Were they police officers?

RCMP personnel?

Private contractors?

Security personnel?

Private individuals?

People falsely claiming authority?

People acting independently?

People acting together?

Who owned the vehicles?

Who operated them?

What communications occurred?

What records exist?

What surveillance systems were operating?

What data was accessible?

Who had access?

Who authorized it?

Was any technology deployed?

If so, by whom?

Under what authority?

Who knew about it?

What happened to the evidence?

Why did some reports fail?

Why were some evidence portals rejected?

Were standard recording procedures followed?

Were body-worn cameras activated when they should have been?

Were CCTV records preserved?

What digital records exist?

These are investigable questions.

They are not answered by telling someone that they are imagining the problem.

They are also not answered by simply accepting every interpretation as fact.

They are answered by evidence.

The real issue is whether anyone should be able to live like this

Desmond Cole’s story remains powerful because it demonstrates something that statistics alone cannot communicate: repeated encounters with authority can change the way a person experiences an entire city.

Cole wrote that his eyes followed every police car that passed him and described this as a matter of survival.

My experience has produced a different but related form of hypervigilance.

In my case, the alleged threat was not confined to police stops.

It allegedly entered the home.

It allegedly appeared near vehicles.

It allegedly followed me onto transit.

It allegedly appeared during professional and academic activities.

It allegedly accompanied attempts to seek police assistance.

It allegedly intersected with litigation and reporting.

And, according to my claim, it eventually became an alleged technology-mediated assault on privacy, bodily autonomy and psychological security.

That is why I use strong language.

Not because strong language proves anything.

It does not.

I use it because the allegations themselves are strong.

The claim alleges torture.

It alleges intimidation.

It alleges technology-facilitated battery.

It alleges sexual battery.

It alleges surveillance.

It alleges misuse or impersonation of police authority.

It alleges institutional failures.

It alleges severe economic consequences.

It alleges continuing harm.

Those allegations now belong to a judicial process.

There should always be somewhere safe

Everyone should have one place where they can close a door.

A bedroom.

A bathroom.

A home.

A place to sleep.

A place to think.

A place where the person can stop being watched.

If the allegations in my lawsuit are ultimately proven, the central wrong will not simply have been that somebody followed me or harassed me.

It will be that the ordinary boundaries separating public life from private life were allegedly dismantled.

That technology was allegedly used not to assist, protect or serve a legitimate public purpose, but to invade.

That the alleged conduct continued even inside the household.

That unidentified persons allegedly invoked the authority of the police or RCMP.

That repeated attempts to obtain assistance did not produce an effective answer.

And that the cumulative consequences reached beyond discomfort into housing, employment, finances, education, health, mobility and the ability to live an ordinary life.

That is why the question I want people to consider is not:

“Do you believe every single allegation?”

It is this:

“What should happen when a person makes serious allegations of technologically enabled harassment, possible police impersonation and continuing invasion of the home, and the identity of the alleged perpetrators is still unknown?”

The answer should not be ridicule.

It should not be blind belief.

It should be investigation.

Evidence.

Accountability.

And, where the evidence establishes wrongdoing, consequences.

Because no city is genuinely free if a person can walk its streets but cannot feel safe inside their own home.

And no system of justice can be considered adequate if a person has to spend years trying to discover who is allegedly responsible for the conduct from which they are seeking protection.

My lawsuit is an attempt to force those questions into the open.

The court will ultimately determine what happened.

Until then, the responsible position is neither to declare the allegations proven nor to pretend they are irrelevant.

They are serious allegations.

They are documented allegations.

They have been pleaded in court.

And they deserve to be tested.

Legal and factual note

This article discusses allegations contained in the Plaintiff’s civil pleading and the Plaintiff’s own account of events. The allegations concerning the Broadcaster Group, police/RCMP affiliation, surveillance technology, technological battery, torture, vehicles and institutional involvement have not been presented here as adjudicated facts. The civil claim itself states that certain identities, technical specifications, operational relationships and sources of information remain matters for disclosure, investigation and discovery.
The Toronto Life comparison is similarly limited: Desmond Cole’s 2015 account concerns racialized police scrutiny, repeated stops and carding, whereas the present article discusses a separate set of allegations involving alleged technological harassment, unidentified actors and claimed or purported police/RCMP authority. Cole’s article was published April 21, 2015.

Primary sources

Desmond Cole, “The Skin I’m In: I’ve been interrogated by police more than 50 times—all because I’m black,” Toronto Life, April 21, 2015. Read the original Toronto Life article

Rohit Sohanlal, Form 14A – Civil – Torts and General Litigation, Ontario Superior Court of Justice, Statement of Claim, CV-26-00012520-0000, June 2026.