The homes of several Wire editors were also raided following a complaint about a story about forged documents.
Delhi police raided the offices of a news outlet known for its fierce denunciation of the Indian government, following a retracted article about a politician in connection with the ruling party’s social media campaigns.
Officers arrived at the homes of several Wire editors in the middle of the night and confiscated their laptops and phones. They also registered the website in the capital.
A complaint followed through Amit Malviya, head of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) social media department, who accused The Wire of publishing a story tarnishing its reputation.
Wire’s report alleged that Malviya used special privileges granted to him through Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, for posts critical of the BJP.
Malviya said his ability to do his homework had been damaged. “They [the stories] have vitiated the environment and seriously shaken the relationships and I accept them as true over the years so that I can carry out the purposes of my responsibility. “Malviya said.
The Wire discovered after publication that an investigator had falsified the documents used in the story. He pointed out the error, retracted and expressed the need for stricter cross-checking through independent experts.
The Wire filed its own opposition to independent investigator Devesh Kumar for offering it manufactured equipment. The website’s editor-in-chief, Siddharth Varadarajan, said Tuesday that Kumar confessed to fabricating the evidence.
The raids have been criticized by journalists and opposition politicians, who for years have accused the government of seeking to muzzle the media.
Critics of Narendra Modi’s government say freedom of expression has been severely restricted since it came to force in 2014, with much of the mainstream media acting almost as government cheerleaders. This has left some news channels and publications that work independently.
Suhasini Haidar, a journalist, described the raid as “thinly veiled intimidation. “A spokesman for the opposition Congress tweeted: “The Modi government’s resolution on all loose media voices: suffocate, repress, subjugate, strangle. . . The country has become a police state. “
An editorial on the news site Citizen, under pressure over the need for news hounds to do their duty and responsibility, criticized the raid. to intimidation and is an action used through governments to muzzle the media by sowing concern and terror,” he said.
Press freedom bodies have also condemned a developing trend to prevent bloodhounds from leaving the country. In the most recent example, a Kashmiri photojournalist said last month that she was banned from flying to New York, where she was due to receive a Pulitzer Prize. Sanna Irshad Mattoo, 27, a member of a Reuters team of photographers who won a Pulitzer for reportage photography for her policy on India’s coronavirus crisis.
This was the time Mattoo was prevented from traveling abroad. In July, officials arrested her as she tried to board a flight to Paris, where she was due to attend the launch of an e-book and an exhibition featuring her photos of Kashmir.
In the most recent World Press Freedom Index, through Reporters Without Borders in May, India fell to 150th out of 180 countries, down from 142 a year earlier and 133rd in 2016.