Social media trolling against Indian public figures including journalists and actors has been directly co-ordinated from inside the country’s ruling party—the Bharatiya Janata party (BJP), a new book has claimed.

In a report published by The Guardian, Sadhavi Khosla, the 37-year-old former party volunteer, said that whether intended by the BJP or not, the social media campaigns would often spill over into religious and sexual trolling of the target, especially if it was a woman.

Khosla’s account is contained in a new book by the journalist Swati Chaturvedi, published in India on Tuesday, I Am a Troll, which investigates the ties between abusive social media accounts and the BJP where she claims that starting late in 2013, and for nearly two years after, she was one of hundreds of BJP supporters receiving direct instructions on messages to push online from senior members of the party’s social media unit.

The report further states that the trolls’ “hit list” included political opponents, such as the Congress party vice president, Rahul Gandhi, adding that the screenshots provided by Khosla also showed Bollywood star Aamir Khan, who were among those singled out.

She further alleged the 2014 prime ministerial campaign of Narendra Modi used social media volunteers to push critical messages about public figures perceived to be opposed to the BJP, read the report.

The Guardian reported that the BJP did not respond to its request for comment but the former head of the party’s social media unit, Arvind Gupta, told the Indian Express that Khosla’s claims were unsubstantiated and that she was a supporter of the opposition Congress party.

Prominent Indian women, particularly journalists, have been raising concerns for more than three years about the scale and tone of the abuse they face online, with much of it anonymous, sexually charged and fiercely nationalist.

A fervent Modi supporter at the time, Khosla said she enthusiastically participated, using her Twitter account to criticise Rahul Gandhi and his mother Sonia. But she claims she grew uncomfortable when ordered to tweet criticisms of prominent Indian journalists, such as Rajdeep Sardesai and Barkha Dutt, which sometimes featured “slanderous claims”.

“It was a never-ending drip feed of hate and bigotry against the minorities, the Gandhi family, journalists on the hit list, liberals, anyone perceived as anti-Modi,” she is quoted in the book as saying.

 “I simply could not follow [the] directions anymore when I saw rape threats made against female journalists like Barkha Dutt,” she said.

Khosla left the unit after she was asked to spread a petition calling for SnapDeal, a shopping website, to cut its ties with Bollywood actor Aamir Khan. Bollywood’s prominent actor Khan, a Muslim, had attracted the ire of Hindu nationalists in November 2015 after remarking on the “growing intolerance” he felt was taking root in India.

SnapDeal released a statement at the time distancing itself from the 51-year-old’s comments and did not renew his contract in February this year. Another Khan endorsement contract, for the Incredible India! tourism campaign, was also allowed to lapse – though the government has denied this was linked to the actor’s remarks.

Chaturvedi, the author of the new book, has herself been the target of social media trolling, filing a police complaint last year against an anonymous Twitter account that had deluged her with malicious posts.

India’s minister for women, Maneka Gandhi, has acknowledged that “viciousness against women on the net” is a problem and set up a hashtag for people to report abuse.